“I wonder if Happy will try to take them into the cooler the same as she did Jack and Jill?” said Anne to Miss Jule one day, when she was telling her of some newly discovered wonder in the pups.
“Not at this season of the year; she is more likely to search out an oven for them. Where are they? I see they are not in their day nursery.”
“Then Tommy must have taken them out and forgotten them, for they can’t climb over the board yet; at least I think not,” said Anne, running hither and thither. They were not in the kennel, or any of the piazzas, neither back of the lilac hedge, nor in any of the many places that the dogs choose for sunning themselves. Tommy stoutly denied that he had taken them out, but added, “I shouldn’t think they would have liked to stay where you put them this morning, for it was right under the edge of the big apple tree, and every minute apples fell down plunk.”
A look in the day nursery proved this to be perfectly true, for it contained half a dozen sizable apples.
Anne was worried, for though it was now certain that the pups had gotten out by themselves, no one had seen either Happy or her family.
“They are safe enough somewhere, though it is hard to tell just where she has taken them,” said Miss Jule. “Happy evidently was not satisfied with the location of the nursery to-day, and she is teaching you a lesson. I don’t blame her, either; for you left them under a cannonade of apples, in a sharp draught, as well.”
Anne’s father and mother, Baldy, and also Mary Anne came out and joined the hunt, Anne even insisting that Baldy should pull out some of the stones where the entrance to Jack and Jill’s cooling house had been.
After a while the elders grew tired, and went into the garden-house where Anne’s mother often brewed tea these cool afternoons, for, as she said, Happy would soon come for her supper, and then they could trace the pups.
This was too inactive a method to suit Anne and Tommy, so they continued to rummage in every nook and corner that was big enough to hold a hen’s egg. Suddenly they set up a shout at the same time, and the tea drinkers hurrying out beheld a funny sight. There were several hot-bed frames set against the stone wall. In the spring they were used for forcing early vegetables, and starting the flower seeds, while a few plants remained in them here and there. One part where the sun shone brightest had been cleared and sown with the fall planting of pansies, which were just above ground. In this, surrounded by the sixlets, sat Happy! The sixlets were also having afternoon tea, with their fat little stomachs resting on the hot earth that their mother had thoroughly scratched up to make it the softer for them.
