er, 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.

After she had gone away, Flaxie wandered drearily about the house,
saying, "Oh dear! what shall I do without my twin cousin?"

You would have thought she had enough left to make her happy. Dr. Gray's
house stood on a hill facing the river, with a green yard in front, and
a stable and two gardens behind it. It was all beautiful, and Flaxie
enjoyed the stable as well as the fruit and flower gardens, for she was
very fond of the horses, Whiz and Hiawatha, and the cows and the hens.
You needn't tell anybody, but I do pity children who never hunted for
hens' nests: it is such capital fun! And then there was the handsome
dog, Tantra-Bogus, one of Flaxie's best friends.

In the house she had her "splendid Dr. Papa;" her dear brother Preston,
who could whittle all sorts of things with a penknife; her darling
Grandma Gray, an old lady with white hair, white cap, and white ribbons;
and last, but not least, she had the "beautifullest baby" Philip, who
could stand on his head "just as cunning," and "hug grizzly"--that is,
like a grizzly bear. Flaxie loved him with her whole heart, but there
were moments when she felt half ashamed of him, for he was eighteen
months old, and hadn't a sign of a tooth; wasn't it awful?

"Perhaps he'll cut one before your mother and Julia come home; I keep
hoping so," said grandma, feeling in baby's mouth with her finger, which
baby bit hard, like an old rogue as he was.

"Will they give him some gold teeth, if his don't ever cut?" asked
Flaxie anxiously. "Preston says they will."

"No," replied Mrs. Prim, who sat by the window, with her little ebony
work-box on a stand beside her. "Your brother Preston says very a