"Oh, I'm going to have a dandy time!" laughed the little girl.
She forgot all about her Candy Rabbit. There he sat on a shelf near the gas stove, and as the cakes in the oven began to bake, the fire grew hotter and hotter and the Candy Rabbit began to feel very strange.
"Dear me, I am afraid I am going to melt!" he said to himself, not daring to speak aloud when Madeline and the cook were there.
The kitchen grew warmer and warmer, the stove became hotter and hotter, and, on the shelf where the Candy Rabbit sat, it was like a summer day in the blazing sun.
"This is worse than anything that ever happened to me before," said the Candy Rabbit. "I think I'll just melt down into a lump of sugar! That would be dreadful!"
Of course it would, and Madeline would have been very sorry if anything like that had happened. One of the ears of the Rabbit was just getting soft and drooping over a little to one side, when the cook happened to look toward the shelf.
"Oh, Madeline, my dear!" she cried. "Your Candy Rabbit!"
"What's the matter?" asked the little girl, looking up from the dish she was scraping clean with a spoon, in order to eat the last of the chocolate inside.
"He will melt if you leave him on that shelf near the hot stove," went on the cook. "Look, one of his ears is drooping!"
"Oh, dear!" screamed Madeline, and, dropping the spoon, she caught her Easter toy from the shelf.