“Why don’t you scrape it off?” asked Herbert.

“Why, I might scrape off half his ear!  No, indeed!” Madeline said.

“Well, wash it off,” suggested Dick, who had come over to play with Herbert.  “Take him up to the bathroom and wash his ear.  My mother washes my ears.”

“Pooh! your ears aren’t made of candy,” said Madeline.

“No.  And I’m glad they’re not, or the fellows would be biting pieces off all the while,” laughed Dick.

“Well, I guess I won’t wash my Candy Rabbit—­at least not just yet,” said Madeline.  “I’ll wait until he gets a few more stains on him.”

Several days passed.  The bad cat did not again try to catch the goldfish.  He seemed to have been frightened away when Dorothy threw the Sawdust Doll at him.  And, I am glad to say, the Doll was not hurt in the least.  In fact, she rather liked scaring cats.

One day Madeline took her Candy Rabbit out into the kitchen where the cook was making a cake.  She had just put the cake into the oven to bake, and there were several dishes on the table—­dishes in which were dabs of sweet, sugary icing and cake batter.

“Oh, may I please clean out some of the cake dishes?” asked Madeline.

“Yes,” answered the cook kindly.

This was one of the pleasures Madeline and Herbert enjoyed on baking day, but Herbert was not on hand then, so Madeline had all the dishes to herself.  She set her Candy Rabbit on a shelf, got a spoon, and began to clean the icing dish.  Of course you know that means she scraped the dish with the spoon and ate the icing she scraped up.  Yes, and I think she even licked the spoon.  After she had finished the white icing dish there was a chocolate one to start on.

“Oh, I’m going to have a dandy time!” laughed the little girl.

She forgot all about her Candy Rabbit.  There he sat on a shelf near the gas stove, and as the cakes in the oven began to bake, the fire grew hotter and hotter and the Candy Rabbit began to feel very strange.

“Dear me, I am afraid I am going to melt!” he said to himself, not daring to speak aloud when Madeline and the cook were there.

The kitchen grew warmer and warmer, the stove became hotter and hotter, and, on the shelf where the Candy Rabbit sat, it was like a summer day in the blazing sun.

“This is worse than anything that ever happened to me before,” said the Candy Rabbit.  “I think I’ll just melt down into a lump of sugar!  That would be dreadful!”

Of course it would, and Madeline would have been very sorry if anything like that had happened.  One of the ears of the Rabbit was just getting soft and drooping over a little to one side, when the cook happened to look toward the shelf.

“Oh, Madeline, my dear!” she cried.  “Your Candy Rabbit!”

“What’s the matter?” asked the little girl, looking up from the dish she was scraping clean with a spoon, in order to eat the last of the chocolate inside.