There was silence for a minute, during which the rain made a great pattering outside; then little Helen, who was serenely busy with her paper dolls, replied, "Ikey's grandma won't let him come over, 'cause he took her fur rug and Sallie's clothes-pins."
"What did he want with the clothes-pins and rug?"
"We wanted them to play with, Aunt Zélie. You can do a great many things with clothes-pins," Bess explained.
"Aleck was to have been King Richard—the rug was for him at the banquet; and now he hasn't come and we can't do anything," said Louise mournfully.
Aunt Zélie sat down on the sofa and folded her hands in her lap.
"I should like to know how many of our things have been carried over to the Brown house garden," she said.
"We took some of the straw cushions and two or three cups that Mandy said we might play with," replied Bess, watching her aunt's face anxiously. There was another silence, during which Carl became absorbed in a book and Louise gave her attention to Helen's dolls. Then Aunt Zélie spoke:
"The more I think of this the more uncomfortable I feel about it."
"I can't see why," came from Carl.
"Because it seems to me such a lawless proceeding. Do you know that there are people who say that no children were ever so lawless as American children to-day?"