an't
have you mussing around my kitchen, Sammie, so Susie is the only one who
can help me make Hot Cross Buns."

"Ask her if we can have the batter dishes and the one she mixes the
frosting in, to clean out," prosed Bully, in a whisper, and when Sammie
asked the nurse, who was also a cook, she said:

"Oh, I suppose so. But don't come around bothering while Susie and I are
busy. I'll set the dishes out for you."

Then Sammie and Bully felt very good, for it's lots of fun to clean out
the cake dishes when any one is baking, especially when Hot Cross Buns
are being made. So the little boy rabbit and the little frog, who was
such a good jumper, played marbles under the trees in the big woods.

Then Susie and Nurse Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy went to work in the kitchen. First
they took some flour, milk, eggs, sugar and whatever else goes into Hot
Cross Buns, and mixed them all up in a big dish.

"Oh, my! How good that smells!" exclaimed Susie. "Won't Sammie and
Bully be glad to get that?"

"Yes," said the nurse-cook, "but now we must make the frosting to go on
top, and I think I'll mix in it some of the maple sugar that Uncle
Wiggily boiled."

"Oh, fine!" exclaimed Susie, and she clapped her two front paws
together, she was so glad.

So she and Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy made a nice dish of maple-sugar frosting to
go on top of the buns when they were baked.

"Now," said the cook, after a little while, "we must get the pans ready
to bake them in. And, as we haven't much room in the kitchen, we will
just set the dish of dough and the frosting out on the window sill,
where they won't be in our way. As soon as we have the tins greased we
will make the buns and put them in the oven to bake."

So the nice, sweet, good-smelling and good-tasting batter and the dish
of maple-sugar frosting were set outside on the window sill. Oh, how
nice it smelled. It's a good thing that sly old fox wasn't around, I
tell you!

Well, after a while, Sammie and Bully got tired of playing marbles, and
they walked around to the back of the underground house. And what do you
think? If Bully didn't see those dishes that had been set out on the
window sill! Yes indeed, he saw them! Oh, he had sharp eyes, let me tell
you!

"Look here!" he cried to Sammie. "They've put the stuff out for us. Oh,
what a lot of it! Nice, sweet batter, and nice maple-sugar frosting. How
kind they are."

"Do you s'pose all this is for us?" asked Sammie, who, whenever he
cleaned out