ishes in which were dabs of
sweet, sugary icing and cake batter.

"Oh, may I please clean out some of the cake dishes?" asked Madeline.

"Yes," answered the cook kindly.

This was one of the pleasures Madeline and Herbert enjoyed on baking
day, but Herbert was not on hand then, so Madeline had all the dishes to
herself. She set her Candy Rabbit on a shelf, got a spoon, and began to
clean the icing dish. Of course you know that means she scraped the
dish with the spoon and ate the icing she scraped up. Yes, and I think
she even licked the spoon. After she had finished the white icing dish
there was a chocolate one to start on.

"Oh, I'm going to have a dandy time!" laughed the little girl.

She forgot all about her Candy Rabbit. There he sat on a shelf near the
gas stove, and as the cakes in the oven began to bake, the fire grew
hotter and hotter and the Candy Rabbit began to feel very strange.

"Dear me, I am afraid I am going to melt!" he said to himself, not
daring to speak aloud when Madeline and the cook were there.

The kitchen grew warmer and warmer, the stove became hotter and hotter,
and, on the shelf where the Candy Rabbit sat, it was like a summer day
in the blazing sun.

"This is worse than anything that ever happened to me before," said the
Candy Rabbit. "I think I'll just melt down into a lump of sugar! That
would be dreadful!"

Of course it would, and Madeline would have been very sorry if anything
like that had happened. One of the ears of the Rabbit was just getting
soft and drooping over a little to one side, when the cook happened to
look toward the shelf.

"Oh, Madeline, my dear!" she cried. "Your Candy Rabbit!"

"What's the matter?" asked the little girl, looking up from the dish she
was scraping clean with a spoon, in order to eat the last of the
chocolate inside.

"He will melt if you leave him on that shelf near the hot stove," went
on the cook. "Look, one of his ears is drooping!"

"Oh, dear!" screamed Madeline, and, dropping the spoon, she caught her
Easter toy from the shelf.

It was only just in time, too, for the poor Rabbit was just beginning to
melt. In fact, one of his ears did soften and twist over to one side a
little. But Madeline quickly took him out on the cool porch, and the
Rabbit felt better. However, that queer twist, or droop, stayed in one
ear--not the one with the grass-stain on, but the other.

"I don't care," Madeline said, when her toy was cool and all righ