“I can’t do without my toys, Nana. I must do mischief if you won’t let me take all my toys; I can’t help it.”
“I haven’t got room for half those, Master Olly, and you’ll have ever so many new things to play with when we get to Ravensnest.”
“There’ll be the new children, Olly,” said Milly, “and the little rivers and all the funny new flowers.”
“Those aren’t toys,” said Olly, looking ready to cry. “I don’t know nothing about them.”
“Now,” said nurse, making a place in the box, “bring me your bricks and your big ball, and your picture-books. There, that’s all I can spare you.”
“Wait one minute,” said Olly, rushing off; and just then Mrs. Norton called nurse away to speak to her in the drawing-room. When nurse came back she saw nobody in the nursery. Milly had gone out in the garden, Olly was nowhere to be seen. And who had shut down the trunk, which was open when she left it? Me-ow, sounded very softly from somewhere close by.
“Why—Spot! Spot!” called nurse.
Me-ow, Me-ow, came again; a sad choky little mew, right from the middle of the children’s trunk. “Master Olly and his tricks again,” said nurse, running to the box and opening it. There, on the top, lay a quantity of frocks that nurse had left folded up on the floor, thrown in anyhow, with some toys scattered among them, and the frocks and toys were all dancing up and down as if they were bewitched. Nurse took out the frocks, and there was the children’s collar-box, a large round cardboard-box with a lid, jumping from side to side like a box in a fairy tale; and such dreadful pitiful little mews coming from the inside! Nurse undid the lid, and out sprang Spot like a flash of lightning, and ran as if she were running for her life out of the door and down the stairs, and safe into the kitchen, where she cuddled herself up in a corner of the fender, wishing with all her poor trembling little heart that there were no such things in the world as small boys. And then nurse heard a kind of kicking and scuffling in the china cupboard, and when she opened it there sat Olly doubled up, his brown eyes dancing like will-o’-the-wisps, and his little white teeth grinning.
“Oh! Nana, she did make a funny me-ow! I just said to her, Now, Spottie, wouldn’t you like to go in my box? and she said, Yes; and I made her such a comfy bed, and then I stuck all those frocks on the top of her to keep her warm. Why did you let her out, Nana?”
“You little mischief,” said Nana, “do you know you might have smothered poor little Spot? And look at all these frocks; do you think I have got nothing better to do than to tidy up after your tricks?”