The meddlesome little fingers let go the bottle with a jerk. It fell to the floor, its fragrant contents pouring over the carpet. "Oh, you naughty child! What will mother do with you? All of daddy's nice—Yes, Celia; I hear you. I am coming directly. I must wipe up this—He says he can't wait? Well, tell him to bring two pounds of nice lamb chops—rib chops. If they are like the last ones he brought tell him I shall send them right back.
"Now, Doris, I want you to look at mother. Why did you climb up in that chair and pull the cork out of the bottle, when I've told you never to meddle with the things on the chiffonière?"
"I should think that child would know better after a while," put in Carroll, with the solemn air of an octogenarian grandfather. "You ought to have remembered the salad oil last week, Doris, and the ink the week before!"
"Don't interrupt, Carroll; I'm talking to Doris just now. Look at mother; don't hang your head."
"I wanted to—smell of it," muttered the child, digging her round chin into her neck, while she eyed her mother from under puckered brows. "Daddy said I might; lots of times he lets me smell it."
"Yes, when he holds the bottle; but now, you see, poor daddy won't have any nice bay-rum the next time he wants to shave. He'll say 'who spilled my bay-rum?'"
"It smells good!" observed Doris, filling the judicial pause with a rapturous giggle.
"But it will all evaporate before night," said Elizabeth, taking up her youngest, who had thrown The Adventures of Seven Little Pigs on the floor and was protesting loudly at the delay.
"How do you spell evaporate, mother?" asked Carroll. "That's a funny word—e-vap-o-rate. What does it mean, mother?"
"It means to go away into the air—to disappear," Elizabeth told him. "See the big spot on the floor, and smell how fragrant the air is. Now we'll go down to breakfast and I will open the windows; when I come back after a while the bay-rum will be gone; it will be evaporated. Do you understand? Doris can't pick it up and put it back into the bottle, no matter how sorry she may feel to think she has been so careless."