“O Elsie!” cried Sophy, as they were starting again for home, “you must have got your dress in the water, and then on the ground, for it is all muddy.”

“Oh, dear!” sighed Elsie, examining it, “how very dirty and slovenly I must look; and that will vex papa, for he can’t bear to see me untidy.  Can’t we get in the back way, Sophy? so that I can get a clean dress on before he sees me?  I don’t mean to deceive him.  I will tell him all about it afterwards, but I know he wouldn’t like to see me looking so.”

“Yes, to be sure,” Sophy said in reply; “we can go in at the side door, and run up the back stairs.”

“And we may be in time for tea yet, if papa is as late getting home as he is sometimes,” remarked Harold; “so let us run.”

Mr. Allison was late that evening, as Harold had hoped, and tea was still waiting for him, as they learned from a servant whom they met in passing through the grounds:  but when they reached the porch upon which the side door opened, they found, much to their surprise and chagrin, that the ladies were seated there with their work, and Mr. Dinsmore was reading to them.

He looked up from his book as they approached, and catching sight of his little girl’s soiled dress, “Why, Elsie,” he exclaimed, in a mortified tone, “can that be you? such a figure as you are!  Where have you been, child, to get yourself in such a plight?”

“I was playing in the brook, papa,” she answered in a low voice, and casting down her eyes, while the color mounted to her hair.

“Playing in the brook! that is a new business for you, I think.  Well, run up to Aunt Chloe, and tell her I want you made decent with all possible haste or you will be too late for tea.  But stay,” he added as she was turning to go, “you have been crying; what is the matter?”

“I have lost my rings, papa,” she said, bursting into tears.

“Ah!  I am sorry, more particularly because it distresses you, though.  But where did you lose them, daughter?”

“I don’t know, papa, but I am afraid it was in the brook.”

“Ah, yes! that comes of playing in the water.  I think you had better keep out of it in the future:  but run up and get dressed, and don’t cry any more; it is not worth while to waste tears over them.”

Elsie hurried upstairs, delivered her father’s message, and Chloe immediately set to work, and exerting herself to the utmost, soon had her nursling looking as neat as usual.

Rose had followed the little girls upstairs, and was helping Sophy to dress.

“Dere now, darlin’; now I tink you’ll do,” said Chloe, giving the glossy hair a final smooth.  “But what’s de matter? what my chile been cryin’ ’bout?”

“Because, mammy, I lost my rings in the brook, and I’m afraid I will never find them again.”

“No such ting, honey! here dey is safe an’ sound,” and Chloe opened a little jewel-box that stood on the toilet-table, and picking up the rings, slipped them upon the finger of the astonished and delighted child; explaining as she did so, that she had found them on the bureau where Elsie must have laid them before going out, having probably taken them off to wash her hands after eating her dinner.