In view of these short-comings of her parent and her own adroitness at the toilet, Dotty came to the conclusion that she was not, strictly speaking, under any one’s charge, but was taking care of herself.

“I wonder,” thought she, “how many people there are in this car that know I’m going out West!”

She sat up very primly, and looked around.  The faces were nearly all new to her.

“That woman in the next seat, how homely her little girl is, with freckles all over her face!  Perhaps her mother wishes she was as white as I am.  Why, who is that pretty little girl close to my father?”

Dotty was looking straight forward, and had accidentally caught a peep at her own face in the mirror.

“Why, it’s me!  How nice I look!” smiling and nodding at the pleasant picture.

“Sit up like a lady, Dotty, and you’ll look very polite, and very style too.”

Florence Eastman said so much about “style” that Miss Dimple had adopted the word, though she was never know to use it correctly.  I am sorry to say there was a deal of foolish vanity in the child’s heart.  Thoughtless people had so often spoken to her of her beauty, that she was inclined to dwell upon the theme secretly, and to admire her bright eyes in the glass.

“Yes, I do look very style,” she decided, after another self-satisfied nod.  “Now I’d just like to know who that boy is, older’n I am, not half so pretty.  I don’t believe but somebody’s been sitting down on his hat.  What has he got in his lap?  Is it a kitten?  White as snow.  I wish it wasn’t so far off.  He’s giving it something to eat.  How its ears shake!  Papa, papa, what’s that boy got in his lap?”

“What boy?”

“The one next to that big man.  See his ears shake!  He’s putting something in his mouth.”

“In whose mouth?”

Mr. Parlin looked across the aisle.

“That ‘big man’ is my old friend Captain Lally,” said he quite pleased; and in a moment he was shaking hands with him.  Presently the captain and his son Adolphus changed places with the woman and the freckled girl, and made themselves neighbors to the Parlins.  The two seats were turned vis-a-vis, the gentlemen occupying one, the children the other.

Now Dotty discovered what it was that Adolphus had in his lap; it was a Spanish rabbit; and if you never saw one, little reader, you have no idea how beautiful an animal can be.  If there is any gem so soft and sparkling as his liquid Indian-red eyes, with the sunshine quivering in them as in dewdrops, then I should like to see that gem, and have it set in the finest gold, and send it to the most beautiful woman in the world to wear for a ring.  This rabbit was white as a snowball, with ears as pink as blush roses, and a mouth that was always in motion, whether Adolphus put lumps of sugar in it or not.

Dotty went into raptures.  She forgot her “style” hat, and her new dignity, and had no greater ambition than to hold the lovely white ball in her arms.  Adolphus allowed her to do so.  He was very kind to answer all her questions, and always in the most sensible manner.  If Dotty had been a little older, she would have seen that the captain’s son was a remarkably intelligent boy, in spite of his smashed hat.