'Make haste, Nellie, we shall have to go and get ready ourselves very soon.'
Just at that moment the boys' voices were heard in the stable below, and the children stared at each other, dismayed.
'Come on, Frank, let's climb the ladder—I've never been up here before,' and Dora scarcely had time to bury Arabella under a handful of hay before Tom's head appeared.
'Hullo! here are the girls with their silly dolls. Let me have a doll to play with,' and he caught hold of one roughly.
'You had better leave them alone, Tom, if you don't want to get into any more rows,' Frank said, and the little girls begged them to go away.
'This is a jolly place! Come on, Frank, I will bury you in the hay,' and Tom snatched up an armful.
But there was something in the hay he had picked up. Dora gave a loud cry as she saw her beautiful Arabella flung into the air and through the trapdoor opening into the stable below. In her haste to get down and pick up her poor doll, she herself slipped and fell on the hard floor. By the time Nellie and the boys had scrambled down, she was weeping bitterly, not over her own hurts, but over Arabella's smashed face, and she took no notice of Tom when he declared again and again how sorry he was. Of course it had been an accident, but Dora felt too angry and too miserable to forgive him at once.
'Now then, what's all this fuss about? Have you broken that doll, boys?'
It was Grandfather's voice, and he looked very angry as he took in the scene.
No one answered. 'Well, of course,' Grandfather said, 'you boys cannot go to the circus this afternoon, after this. Don't cry over your doll any more, Dora, but run and get ready, and I will buy you a new one.'