“I guess I know I didn’t.”

“You did laugh!  How darst you tell such a fib?”

“If you say that again I’ll take Belinda and go right home; then what will you do?”

“I’ll eat up the cake.”

“No, you wont!  It’s mine, ma said so, and you are only company, so you’d better behave or I wont have any party at all, so now.”

This awful threat calmed Bab’s anger at once, and she hastened to introduce a safer subject.

“Never mind; don’t let’s fight before the children.  Do you know ma says she will let us play in the coach-house next time it rains, and keep the key if we want to.”

“Oh, goody! that’s because we told her how we found the little window under the woodbine, and didn’t try to go in, though we might have just as easy as not,” cried Betty, appeased at once, for after a ten years’ acquaintance she had grown used to Bab’s peppery temper.

“I suppose the coach will be all dust and rats and spiders, but I don’t care.  You and the dolls can be the passengers, and I shall sit up in front and drive.”

“You always do.  I shall like riding better than being horse all the time with that old wooden bit in my mouth, and you jerking my arms off,” said poor Betty, who was tired of being horse all the time.

“I guess we’d better go and get the water now,” suggested Bab, feeling that it was not safe to encourage her sister in such complaints.

“It is not many people who would dare to leave their children all alone with such a lovely cake, and know they wouldn’t pick at it,” said Betty proudly, as they trotted away to the spring, each with a little tin pail in her hand.

Alas, for the faith of these too confiding mammas!  They were gone about five minutes, and when they returned a sight met their astonished eyes which produced a simultaneous shriek of horror.  Flat upon their faces lay the fourteen dolls, and the cake, the cherished cake, was gone!

[Illustration:  BAB AND BETTY ON THEIR WAY TO THE TEA-PARTY.]

For an instant the little girls could only stand motionless, gazing at the dreadful scene.  Then Bab cast her water-pail wildly away, and doubling up her fist, cried out fiercely: 

“It was that Sally!  She said she’d pay me for slapping her when she pinched little Mary Ann, and now she has.  I’ll give it to her!  You run that way.  I’ll run this.  Quick! quick!”

Away they went, Bab racing straight on, and bewildered Betty turning obediently round to trot in the opposite direction as fast as she could, with the water splashing all over her as she ran, for she had forgotten to put down her pail.  Round the house they went, and met with a crash at the back door, but no sign of the thief appeared.

“In the lane!” shouted Bab.

“Down by the spring!” panted Betty, and off they went again, one to scramble up a pile of stones and look over the wall into the avenue, the other to scamper to the spot they had just left.  Still nothing appeared but the dandelions’ innocent faces looking up at Bab, and a brown bird scared from his bath in the spring by Betty’s hasty approach.