had floated into the middle of the pond.  Two china babies had sunk to the very bottom—­their white faces smiled placidly up through the water at their rescuers.  A little rag-doll lay close to the shore, water-logged.  A pretty paper-doll had melted to a pulp.  And the biggest and prettiest of them, a lovely blonde creature with a shapely-jointed body and a bisque head, covered with golden curls, looked hopelessly bedraggled.

“Oh, Betsy Hale!” Dicky said.  “You naughty, naughty girl!  How could you drown your own children like that?”

“I were divin’ them a baff,” Betsy explained.

Betsy was a little, round butterball of a girl with great brown eyes all tangled up in eyelashes and a little pink rosebud of a mouth, folded over two rows of mice-teeth.  She smiled deliciously up into Maida’s face: 

“I aren’t naughty, is I?” she asked.

“Naughty?  You bunny-duck!  Of course you are,” Maida said, giving her a bear-hug.  “I don’t see how anybody can scold her,” she whispered to Dicky.

“Scold her!  You can’t,” Dicky said disgustedly.  “She’s too cute.  And then if you did scold her it wouldn’t do any good.  She’s the naughtiest baby in the neighborhood—­although,” he added with pride, “I think Delia’s going to be pretty nearly as naughty when she gets big enough.  But Betsy Hale—­why, the whole street has to keep an eye on her.  Come, pick up your dollies, Betsy,” he wheedled, “they’ll get cold if you leave them out here.”

The thought of danger to her darlings produced immediate activity on Betsy’s part.  She gathered the dolls under her cape, hugging them close.  “Her must put her dollies to bed,” she said wisely.

“Calls herself her half the time,” Dicky explained.  He gathered up the dresses and shooing Betsy ahead of him, followed her into the yard.

“She’s the greatest child I ever saw,” he said, rejoining Maida a little later.  “The things she thinks of to do!  Why, the other day, Miss Allison—­the sister of the blind lady what sits in the window and knits—­the one what owns the parrot—­well, Miss Allison painted one of her old chairs red and put it out in the yard to dry.  Then she washed a whole lot of lace and put that out to dry.  Next thing she knew she looked out and there was Betsy washing all the red paint off the chair with the lace.  You’d have thought that would have been enough for one day, wouldn’t you?  Well, that afternoon she turned the hose on Mr. Flanagan—­that’s the policeman on the beat.”

“What did he say?” Maida asked in alarm.  She had a vague imaginary picture of Betsy being dragged to the station-house.

“Roared!  But then Mr. Flanagan thinks Betsy’s all right.  Always calls her ‘sophy Sparkles.’  Betsy runs away about twice a week.  Mr. Flanagan’s always finding her and lugging her home.  I guess every policeman in Charlestown knows her by this time.  There, look at her now!  Did you ever see such a kid?”