Dot, when no one was looking, took Spotty out into the hall and gave him half a cookie. Then they both came back into the kitchen wearing such an innocent air that Aunt Polly had to laugh.
“Spotty has a sweet tooth, all right,” she declared. “Don’t let him tease all your cookies away from you, dear. Twaddles, look out!”
The warning came too late, for Twaddles, reaching across the bowl of freshly fried doughnuts to get something, caught his sleeve on the rim of the bowl and succeeded in turning the whole thing upside down over himself.
“I really think,” said patient, long-suffering Aunt Polly, when the doughnuts had been picked up and brushed off and Twaddles had explained how it happened, “I really think, that 109 four children and a dog are too many to have in the kitchen on baking day. Anyway, the turnovers are done. I’ll slip them on a plate and let Meg carry it out under the chestnut tree. Then you may have your picnic.” And so it was settled.
“I wish,” confided Meg, as she bit into a juicy bit of pie––Aunt Polly made wonderful berry pies––“I had my ‘Black Beauty’ book.”
“I’ll never have another doll like Geraldine!” sighed Dot. “Never! And what good are all her clothes? I haven’t any doll to fit ’em.”
“You might take a tuck in ’em for Totty-Fat,” suggested Bobby, using the disrespectful name he had invented for Dot’s old doll. “She’s a sight. Oh dear! I wish I had tried to fly my airplane just once before I lost it.”
“Well, there’s my bird,” mourned Twaddles. “Aunt Polly never heard it sing. And now she never will.”
“I dripped a little juice on my dress,” announced Dot doubtfully, after Meg had gone in to help her aunt wash dishes.
“I should think you had,” said Bobby, gazing 110 severely at the little girl. “I don’t believe blackberry juice comes out, either. Prob’ly that dress will always be spotted now.”