She was pouring from it as she spoke.  Just at that instant she heard a step in the hall without, and a sound as if a hand was laid on the door-knob.

It so startled her that the bottle slipped from her fingers, and striking the bureau as it fell, lay in fragments at her feet; its contents were spilled upon the carpet, and the air of the room was redolent of the delicious perfume.

Gracie, naturally a timid child, shrinking from everything like reproof or punishment, stood aghast at the mischief she had wrought.

“What will mamma say?” was her first thought.  “Oh, I’m afraid she will be so vexed with me that she’ll never love me any more!” And the tears came thick and fast, for mamma’s love was very sweet to the little feeble child, who had been so long without a mother’s care and tenderness.

Then arose the wish to hide her fault.  Oh, if she could only replace the bottle! but that was quite impossible.  Perhaps, though, there might be a way found to conceal the fact that she was the author of the mishap; she did not want to have any one else blamed for her fault, but she would like not to be suspected of it herself.

A bright thought struck her.  She had seen the cat jump on that bureau a few days before and walk back and forth over it.  If she (pussy) had been left in the room alone there that afternoon she might have done the same thing again, and knocked the bottle off upon the floor.

It would be no great harm, the little girl reasoned, trying to stifle the warnings and reproaches of conscience, if she should let pussy take the blame.

Mamma was kind, and wouldn’t have pussy beaten, and pussy’s feelings wouldn’t be hurt, either, by the suspicion.

She hurried out in search of the cat, found her in the hall, pounced on her, carried her into the dressing-room, and left her there with all the doors shut, so that she could not escape, till some one going in would find the bottle broken, and think the cat had done it.

This accomplished, Gracie went back to the play-room and tried to forget her wrong-doing in the interesting employment of dressing her dolls.

Lulu presently left her carving and joined her.  Max had gone for a ride.

While chasing the cat Gracie had not perceived a little woolly head thrust out of a door at the farther end of the hall, its keen black eyes closely watching her movements.

“He, he, he!” giggled the owner of the head, as Gracie secured pussy and hurried into the dressing-room with her, “wondah what she done dat fer!”

“What you talkin’ ’bout, you sassy niggah?” asked Agnes, coming up behind her on her way to Mrs. Raymond’s apartments with another basket of clean clothes, just as Gracie reappeared and hurried up the stairs to the story above.”

“Why, Miss Gracie done come pounce on ole Tab while she paradin’ down de hall, and ketch her up an’ tote her off into Miss Wilet’s dressin’-room, an’s lef her dar wid de do’ shut on her.  What for you s’pose she done do dat?”