Louisa promised, and Cousin Frances went away. For the first half hour Milly played contentedly upon the veranda with her dolls and books and her pet rabbits, while Louisa worked at the sofa cushion she was making for Aunt Wentworth's birthday. Presently Louisa found she had mislaid some of her wool.
"What have I done with those shades of gray? Oh, I know! I left them in the summer-house last night. I hope they have not got wet. Now, Milly, you stay here and play, and I will be back in a minute."
"Why can't I go?" asked Milly.
"Because it is too wet for you. Just stay here and I will be back before you can count twenty."
Milly sat down very obediently and counted twenty two or three times, and still Louisa did not come back. Then the rabbit escaped from her and ran into the grass. Picture-book in hand, Milly pursued him, and after quite a chase, in which her shoes and stockings were wet through, she succeeded in capturing him. Then finding herself in a shady place among the trees, she sat down on the ground, and began to turn over the leaves of her picture-book, the rabbit sitting contentedly in her lap.
Meantime Louisa reached the pretty little Swiss cottage called the summer-house, where she found her worsted uninjured. Unluckily she also found something else—namely, a new book of travels with beautiful wood-cuts, which had been left there the night before.
"There now!" said Louisa, in a tone of triumph. "If I had done that, what a fuss there would have been! I mean to leave it here just to see what a hunt there will be for it. I just want to look at that picture of the leaf-butterfly a minute."
In looking for the leaf-butterfly, Louisa found many other wonderful things, and she lingered, looking at picture after picture, till the ringing of the noon-bell roused her. She hastened back to the house, but Milly was nowhere to be seen. She was not in the house nor yet in the garden. Louisa had not found her when Cousin Frances drove up.
"Where is Milly?" was of course the first question, and Louisa was obliged to confess that she did not know.
She had left her safely seated on the steps while she went for some worsted, and when she came back the child was gone.