ike a
rabbit.

"O, my shole!" cried she, clapping her hands, "the sun's camed again!
A little bit o' sun. I sawed it!"

[Illustration: LOST IN THE WOODS.]

Inspired with new courage, she and Dinah concluded to start for
home; that is to say, they turned round three or four times, and then
struck off into the woods.

* * * * *

Now you may be sure all this could not happen without causing great
alarm at grandpa Parlin's. When the dinner bell rang, everybody asked,
twice over, "Why, where is little Fly?" and Dotty Dimple answered, as
innocently as if it were none of her affairs,--

"Why, isn't she in the house? We s'posed she was. Jennie Vance and I
have just been out in the garden, under your little _crying willow_,
making a wreath. Thought she was in the barn, or somewhere."

"But you haven't been in the garden all the while?"

"No'm; once we went up in the Pines,--grandma, you said we might,--but
we haven't seen Fly,--why, we haven't seen her for the longest while!"

Grace had dropped her knife and fork and was looking pale.

"It was Susy and I that had the care of her, grandma; when you went
out to see the sick lady, you charged us, and we forgot all about it."

"Pretty works, I should think!" cried Horace, springing out of his
chair; "I wouldn't sell that baby for her weight in gold; but I reckon
_you_ would, Grace Clifford, and be glad of it, too."

Grandma held up a warning finger. "I declare," said aunt Louise, very
much agitated, "I never shall consent to have Maria go out of town
again, and leave Katie with us. If she will try to swim in the
watering-trough, she is just as likely to take a walk on the
ridgepole of the house."

Horace darted out of the room with a ghastly face, but came back
looking relieved. He had been up in the attic, and climbed through the
scuttle, without finding any human Fly on the roof, or on the dizzy
tops of the chimneys, either.

But where was the child? Had Ruth seen her? Had Abner?

No; the last that could be remembered, she had been playing by herself
in the green chamber, soaking Dinah's feet in a glass of water. The
"blue kitty," the only creature who had anything to tell, sat washing
her face on the kitchen hearth, and yawning sleepily. Fly's shaker was
gone from the "short nail," and aunt Louise discovered some bank-bills
in a wash-bowl,--"Fly's work, of course." But this was all they knew.

Grandpa searched the barn, Abner the