“I mean a girl as little as me, ’thout anybody but my papa; and he don’t know how to part my hair in the middle.  I have to take all the care of myself.”

Dotty had been trying all the while to call forth some exclamation of awe, or at least surprise.  She was sure Adolphus would be impressed now.

“All the whole care of myself,” repeated she.  “My papa has one of the highest ’pinions of me; and he says I’m as good as a lady when I try.  Were you ever in the cars before, Dollyphus?”

“O, yes,” was the demure reply, “a great many times.  I’ve been round the world.”

Dotty started suddenly, dropping her porte-monnaie on the floor.

“Round the world!  The whole round world?” gasped she, feeling as insignificant as a “Catharine wheel,” which, having “gone up like a rocket,” has come down “like a stick.”

“You didn’t say round the whole world?” repeated she, looking very flat indeed.

“O, yes, in my father’s ship.”

His “father’s ship.”  Dotty’s look of superiority was quenched entirely.  Even her jaunty hat seemed to humble itself, and her haughty head sink with it.

Adolphus stooped and restored the porte-monnaie, which, in her surprise, she had quite forgotten.

“Does your father keep a ship?” asked she, reverently.

“Yes; and mother often makes voyages with him.  Once they took me; and that was the time I went round the world.  We were gone two years.”

“Weren’t you afraid?”

“No, I’m never afraid where my father is.”

“Just a little afraid, I mean, when you found the ship was going tip-side up?”

“Tip-side up?” said Adolphus.  “I don’t understand you.”

“Why, when you got to the other side of the world, then of course the ship turned right over, you know.  Didn’t you want to catch hold of something, for fear you’d fall into the sky?”

Adolphus laughed; he could not very well help it; but, observing the mortification expressed in his companion’s face, he sobered himself instantly, and replied,—­

“No, Dotty; the world is round, but you wouldn’t know it by the looks of it.  Wherever I’ve been, the land seems flat, except the hills, and so does the water, all but the waves.”

As the captain’s son said this, he looked pityingly at his little companion, wondering how she happened to be so silly as to suppose a ship ever went “tip-side up.”  But he was mistaken if he considered Dotty a simpleton.  The child had never gone to school.  Her parents believed there would be time enough yet for her to learn a great many things; and her ignorance had never distressed them half so much as her faults of temper.

“Did you ever go as far as Boston before?” pursued Adolphus, rather grandly, in his turn.

“No, I never,” replied Dotty, meekly; “but Prudy has.”

“So I presume you haven’t been in Spain?  It was there I bought my beautiful rabbit.  Were you ever in the Straits of Malacca?” continued he, roguishly.