"What a Job's comforter you are!" muttered Oliver, as the spoon fell from Kathleen's fingers in dismay.
"It was not my ayah let in the wolf; it was me," Kathleen sobbed. "Let me go and tell mamma all about it."
"Tell me," suggested the major, drawing her between his knees.
"O my dear!" exclaimed Bona, horrified. "Surely you never did. How could you be so naughty?"
Oliver got up and stood by the major, that he might not lose a single word of the faltering confession.
"I never can be happy until Carly's found—never, never!" murmured Kathleen, putting both her little hands into the major's, and repeating earnestly, "You will tell mamma it was all my doing."
The gravity of the look which stole over the major's face as he listened choked Kathleen's voice with sobs, for she felt every one would blame her, and she was shy and sensitive.
"How could you meddle with the blind?" exclaimed Bona. "Only think, my dear, of the terrible consequences!"
"Yes, talk to her, Miss St. Faine," said the major. "She must never do such a thing again."
Bona laid her hand on Kathleen's shoulder, but she shook it off, and darting away into the darkest corner of the hall, hid herself behind her father's door, dislodging a whole family of toads, who had crept indoors to find a shelter from the heat. Kathleen's kitten hotly resented this intrusion, and sprang after them with tail erect and bristling hair. The toads receiving many sharp pats on their broad backs from her uplifted paw, were driven across the hall, backwards and forwards, keeping Bona dancing on one foot as she tried to follow Kathleen. But at last she fled in disgust, as the whole toad family were sent leaping into her dress by pussy's officious paw.