Rosy Posy fell, though the weapon hadn’t touched her, and then Marjorie came on to add her make-believe stabs to the wounds already given to the valiant Cæsar. That martyred Roman lay with her eyes closed, ably representing a stabbed Emperor, and Midget poked at her with the paper-knife, without causing even a giggle on the part of the very youthful actress.
“Now, Kit—Brutus, I mean—it’s your turn. Keep still, Baby, till Kitty stabs you.”
“Ess,” said Rosy Posy, snuggling into the sofa pillows, and awaiting her final dispatchment.
“Wait a minute,” said Kitty, who was poring over the book; “it says, ‘Doth not Brutus bootless kneel?’ I must take off my shoes.”
Kitty was nothing if not literal, so hastily unbuttoning her boots, she flung them off, and a truly bootless Brutus knelt to add more stabs to the defunct Cæsar. The sight of Kitty’s black-stockinged feet sticking out from beneath the white draperies, as she knelt, was too much for King, and silently moving toward her, he tickled the soles so temptingly exposed. Kitty, though soulfully declaiming,
“Fly not; stand still; ambition’s debt is paid!”
was carefully guarding the point of her steel dagger from Rosy Posy’s fat body, but when King tickled her feet, she gave an involuntary kick and fell forward. The sharp steel plunged into the baby’s forearm, and was followed by a spurt of blood and a piercing shriek from the child. Kitty, at sight of the blood, gave a short groan and fainted dead away.
King sprang to pick up Rosy Posy, fairly rolling Kitty away to do so, while Marjorie, with a scared, white face, screamed for Nannie, the nurse.
In a moment every one in the house had rushed to them.
Nannie took the shrieking child from King’s arms, while Miss Larkin and Marjorie bent over the unconscious Kitty.