"I don't know what you would think," said Emily, counting over her trials on her fingers as if they had been so many diamond rings, "if you didn't have anything to eat but brown bread and molasses. I guess you'd think _that_ was pretty poor! And got the molasses all over your face, because you couldn't see to put it in your mouth. And had that woman shake you every time you spoke. And your paw in State's Prison because he killed a man. O, no," repeated she, with triumph, "there isn't any other little girl in this school that's had so much trouble as I have." "No, I s'pose not," responded Dotty, giving up the attempt to compare trials with such a wretched being; "but then I may be blind, some time, too. P'rhaps a chicken will pick my eyes out. A cross hen flew right up and did so to a boy." Emily paid no attention to this foolish remark. "My paw writes me letters," said she. "Here is one in my pocket; would you like to read it?" Dotty took the letter, which was badly written and worse spelled. "Can you read it?" asked Emily, after Dotty had turned it over for some moments in silence. "No, I cannot," replied Dotty, very much ashamed; "but I'm going to school by and by, and then I shall learn everything." "O, no matter if you can't read it to me; my teacher has read it ever so many times. At the end of it, it says, 'Your unhappy and unfortunate paw.' That is what he always says at the end of all his letters; and he wants me to go to the prison to see him." "Why, you _couldn't_ see him." "No," replied Emily, not understanding that Dotty referred to her blindness; "no, I couldn't see him. The superintendent Wouldn't let me go; he says it's no place for little girls." "I shouldn't think it was," said Dotty, looking around for Flyaway, who was riding in a lady's chair made by two admiring little girls. "There was one thing I didn't tell," said Emily, who felt obliged to pour her whole history into her new friend's ears; "I was sick last spring, and had a fever. If it had been scarlet fever I should have died; but it was _imitation_ of scarlet fever, and I got well." "I'm glad you got well," said Dotty, rather tired of Emily's troubles; "but don't you want to play with the other girls? I do." "Yes; let us play Rollo on the Ocean," cried Octavia, who was Emily's bosom friend, and was seldom away from her long at a time, but had just now been devoting herself to Katie. "Here is the ship. All aboard!" CHAPTER III. PLAYING SHIP.