It was a very busy time, and Baby was the busiest of any. There was so much to think of. The rabbits too had to be left behind, which was very sad, for one couldn't write letters to them on their birthdays; neither Denny, whom he asked about it, nor Baby himself, could tell when the rabbits' birthdays were, and besides, as Baby said, "what would be the good of writing them letters if they couldn't read them?" The only thing to do was to get the little girl at the lodge to promise to take them fresh cabbages every morning—that was one of the things Herr Baby had to see about, himself. Lisa lost him one morning, and found him at the lodge, after a great hunt, talking very gravely to the little girl about it.

"Zou will p'omise, Betsy, p'omise certain sure, nebber to forget."—P. 61.
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"Zou will p'omise, Betsy, p'omise certain sure, nebber to forget," he was saying, and poor Betsy looked quite frightened, Herr Baby was so very solemn. Fritz wanted to make her kiss her mother's old Testament, the way he had seen men do sometimes in his grandfather's study when they came to tell about things, and to promise they would speak the truth; but Betsy, though she was ready enough to promise, didn't like the other idea at all. She might be had up to the court for such like doings, she said, and as neither Fritz nor Baby had any idea what sort of place the court was, though they fancied it was some kind of prison for people who didn't keep their word, they thought it better to leave it.

The "calanies" and the "Bully" were to go, that was a comfort, and Peepy-Snoozle and Tim, the two dormice, also, another comfort. Baby's own packing was a serious matter, but, on the whole, I think mother and Lisa and everybody were rather glad he had it to do, as it gave other people a chance of getting theirs done without the little feet pattering along the passage or up the stairs, and the little shrill voice asking what was going to be put into this trunk or into that carpet-bag. He gave up thinking so much about the other packing after a while, for he found his own took all his time and attention. Mother had found him a box after all. Not the box of course—that was left empty, by Baby's wish, till some day when he was a big man, he should go to the country of the fairy glass and buy mother some new jugs—but a very nice little box, and she gave him cotton wool and crushy paper too, and everything was as neat as possible, and the box quite packed and ready, the first evening. But it was very queer that every day after that Herr Baby found something or other he had forgotten, or something that Denny and he decided in their early morning talks, that it would be silly to take. Or else it came into his head in the night that his best Bible would be better in the other corner, and the scenty purse on the top of it instead of at one side. Any way it always happened that the box had to be unpacked and packed again, and the very last evening there was Herr Baby on his knees before it on the floor, giving the finishing touches, long after he should have been in bed.

"And we have to be up so early to-morrow morning," said mother, "my dear little boy, you really should have been fast asleep by this time."

"And he wakes me so early in the morning," said Denny, who was standing before the fire giving herself little cross shakes every time poor Lisa, who was combing out her long fair hair, came to a tuggy bit. "Lisa, you're hurting me; Lisa, do take care," she added snappishly.

"My dear Denny, how very impatient you are!" said her mother. "I don't know how you will bear all the little discomforts of a long journey if you can't bear to have your hair combed."

On this, Denny, as Fritz would have said, "shut up." She could not bear it to be thought that she was babyish or "silly." Her great, great wish was to be considered quite a big girl. You could get her to do anything by telling her it would be babyish not to do it, or that doing it would be like big people, which, of course, showed that she was rather babyish in reality, as sensible children understand that they cannot be like big people in everything, and that they wouldn't be at all nice if they were.

Baby always felt sorry for Denny or any of them when mother found fault with them. He jumped up from the floor—at least he got up, his legs were too short for him to spring either up or down very actively—and trotted across to his sister.