"No, you wont! It's mine, ma said so, and you are only company, so you'd better behave or I wont have any party at all, so now."
This awful threat calmed Bab's anger at once, and she hastened to introduce a safer subject.
"Never mind; don't let's fight before the children. Do you know ma says she will let us play in the coach-house next time it rains, and keep the key if we want to."
"Oh, goody! that's because we told her how we found the little window under the woodbine, and didn't try to go in, though we might have just as easy as not," cried Betty, appeased at once, for after a ten years' acquaintance she had grown used to Bab's peppery temper.
"I suppose the coach will be all dust and rats and spiders, but I don't care. You and the dolls can be the passengers, and I shall sit up in front and drive."
"You always do. I shall like riding better than being horse all the time with that old wooden bit in my mouth, and you jerking my arms off," said poor Betty, who was tired of being horse all the time.
"I guess we'd better go and get the water now," suggested Bab, feeling that it was not safe to encourage her sister in such complaints.
"It is not many people who would dare to leave their children all alone with such a lovely cake, and know they wouldn't pick at it," said Betty proudly, as they trotted away to the spring, each with a little tin pail in her hand.
Alas, for the faith of these too confiding mammas! They were gone about five minutes, and when they returned a sight met their astonished eyes which produced a simultaneous shriek of horror. Flat upon their faces lay the fourteen dolls, and the cake, the cherished cake, was gone!
For an instant the little girls could only stand motionless, gazing at the dreadful scene. Then Bab cast her water-pail wildly away, and doubling up her fist, cried out fiercely: