When Mabel appeared at her gate to face the wondering Dot, she did not look heart-broken because Bubby had taken a sudden dislike to her.
“What ever is the matter, Mabel Creamer?” asked the smallest Corner House girl.
“Oh—nothin’. Only I just fixed that kid for once,” declared Mabel, with impish satisfaction. “I don’t believe they’ll leave me to watch him all the time while Lyddy and Peg go off to a movin’ pitcher show.”
“Oh, my!” said the awe-struck Dot. “What ever did you do?”
“I’ll tell you what I did, Dot Kenway,” said Mabel, dropping her voice to a whisper. “Bubby wants to be played with all the time. You don’t get a minute to call your soul your own,” she added, quoting some of her elders.
“So, if he wanted to be amused all so fine, I amused him. I smeared molasses on his fingers and then I gave him a feather out of the pillow. Oh, he was amused! He was trying to pick that feather off his fingers for half an hour, and was just as still as still! It might ha’ lasted longer, too, only he got mad with the feather, and bawled.”
Dot did not know whether to laugh at, or be horrified by, such depravity as this. But she was glad that Mabel was free to go home with her at this time, for Tess had been kept after school.
“We’ve got four of just the cunningest kittens,” Dot said, to her visitor. “Of course, they are really Almira’s. Santa Claus got them for her. But we call them ours.”
“My! isn’t that fine?” cried Mabel. “We’ve got two cats, but they’re lazy old things. They never have any kittens. We call them Paul and Timothy.”
Almira’s young family still nested upon Unc’ Rufus’ old coat in the woodshed. Dot put two in her apron to bring them out on the porch where the cunning little things could be seen. But when Mabel grabbed up the other two there was a good deal of noise attending the operation.