“I beg your pardon for interrupting you; but could you tell me the way to Daddy Coax’s house?” Kitty asked in her best-company-manners voice, for she felt this was her last chance—no one else could tell her if these children did not.
“Daddy Coax! oh, yes, certainly—we know it quite well. Turn on your right—no—no—turn on your left. No; keep straight along.”
“Daddy Coax’s house! Why, of course—it’s somewhere.”
They all spoke together, or rather each before the other had finished, so their words sounded as if treading on each other’s heels. They all pointed as they spoke, first one way, then the other. At last they all tapped their foreheads, and looked at each other, as if for inspiration. Then they returned to their game. What was the game? Was it hunt the slipper?
It was hunt the slipper, hunt the handkerchief, hunt the pencil, hunt everything!
“There’s my boot!” cried one. “It had got into my pocket.”
“I have found my handkerchief!” shouted another triumphantly. “It had crumpled itself up in my sandwich-box.”
“There is my geography-book, oh, dear! oh, dear! It had gone and thrown itself into the slop-pail.”
“Did any one ever see so many blots?” dolefully muttered one little girl, turning over the pages of her copy-book. “It is all the fault of that paper. It attracts the ink so.”
Kitty rather liked this way of explaining the presence of blots. She thought there was something in it.