But before the robins had had time to cover them with leaves, or even to think of it, there was a shout from Preston Gray.
“Hurrah, boys, I’ve found ’em!”
He and half a dozen other lads had been out all the afternoon in search of the little wanderers, and here it was five o’clock. They carried them home on their backs, taking turns, and Flaxie looked up only once to ask sleepily:
“Is it ha’ pas’ two?”
“Won’t she catch it, though?” said Bert Abbott, who was in great awe of Mrs. Prim.
But Mrs. Prim was a just woman, and she thought poor little Flaxie’s punishment had been hard enough. Her party was over long ago; the guests hadn’t stayed to supper, and had gone home saying they “didn’t think Flaxie was very polite,” and they “wouldn’t go to her parties any more.” And here she was, tired and wretched, and scratched all over by blackberry bushes. No, Auntie Prim didn’t even scold. She merely looked through her spectacles at grandma, and said, “Children are so absurd!”
And grandma replied sorrowfully:
“Well, they have to suffer for their own naughtiness, and that does grieve me!”
“They ought to suffer,” said Mrs. Prim; “it is the only way they can learn not to behave so again.”
Dear little Milly heard this, and remembered it, and repeated it to her mother the next week when she went home to Hilltop. She thought she had suffered so much that she should never be “absurd” again, even to please her beloved Flaxie Frizzle.