“Mew!  Mew!  Mew!”

“Oh, she’s caught it!  Margy’s caught the kittie,” cried Mun Bun.  “I can hear him holler.”

Certainly something seemed to have happened to the kitten, for it was mewing very loudly.  Mr. Bunker reached in under the fruit stand, and made a grab for something.  He gave a pull and out came—­Margy!

And as Margy came into view, being pulled by one leg by her father, who found that was the only way he could reach her, it was seen that the little girl held, clasped in her arms, the kitten after which she had crawled.

“I got it!  I got it!” cried Margy, as she sat down on the sidewalk in front of the fruit stand.

The kitten was a soft, furry one, but it was rather mussed and bedraggled now, from the way Margy had mauled it.  And the little Bunker girl was rather tousled herself, for there was not much room underneath the stand where she had crawled.

“Oh, my dear Margy!” cried Mrs. Bunker.  “You are such a sight!”

“But I got my kittie!” said the little girl.

By this time quite a crowd had gathered around the six little Bunkers and their father and mother.  Margy still sat on the sidewalk, with the kitten in her lap, petting and rubbing it.

“Come!  We must hurry!” exclaimed Mr. Bunker.  “We may miss the boat.  Get up, Margy.  Rose, you help your mother dust Margy off, and then we must hurry.”

“Can’t I take the kittie?” asked the little girl.

“No, dear,” answered her mother.  “It isn’t yours.  And besides, we never could take it to Cousin Tom’s with us.  Put it down, Margy, my dear!”

“Oh, oh, I don’t want to!” cried the little girl, and real tears came into her eyes.  “I got this kittie out of a dark corner, and it loves me and I love it!  I want it.”

“But you can’t take it,” said Daddy Bunker.  “The kittie must stay here.  It belongs to the fruit stand.  It’s your cat, isn’t it?” he asked the Italian.

“My keeten?  No.  I have no keeten.  I sell banan’, orange, apple!  You buy some I give you keetie.  Me no want!”

“No, and we don’t want it, either,” said Mrs. Bunker.  “I was hoping it was yours so you could say you had to keep it here to drive the mice away.  If Margy thought it was yours she wouldn’t want to take it away.”

“Ah, I see!” exclaimed the Italian with a smile.  “All right, I keep the keeten,” and he said the name in a funny way.

“There, Margy!” exclaimed her father.  “You see you’ll have to leave the kitten here to keep the mice away from the oranges.”

“Can’t I take it to Cousin Tom’s with me?”

“No.  And you must put it down quickly, and hurry, or we shall miss the boat.”

Margy started to cry, but the Italian, who seemed to understand children, quickly offered her a big, yellow orange.  Then Margy let go of the kitten, and the fruit man quickly picked it up and put it down in a little box out of sight.