hat will Sophie say?"

"Sophie will say you are a naughty, wicked little creature," cried
the maid, darting out suddenly from behind a tree. "Come in this
minute and get your things changed. Monsieur Mervyn, go to the
nursery at once."

"I won't go! I won't go a bit!" cried Bunny, stamping her foot
angrily. "The sun will dry me in a minute, and I won't go with you;
so there!"

"Come along, Bunny, like a good girl," said Mervyn, "let us run fast
and see who will get up to the nursery first," and away he went up
the path as fast as he could.

"I won't go, Sophie. I want to stay with Frank," cried Bunny once
more, as she caught the boy's hand and held on to it tightly.

"You ought to go, dear, indeed you ought," said Frank. "See, Mervyn
has gone, and you know you should always do what Sophie tells you."

"No, I won't; she's a nasty thing! and it's twice as nice out here,
so I won't go one bit."

"Your mama and Miss Kerr have returned to the house, and you must
come in and get changed your dress, mademoiselle."

"I won't! I won't," shrieked Bunny, clinging more closely to Frank,
and turning her back upon her nurse in a most impertinent manner.

"We shall see if you do not, you bad, naughty child," cried Sophie
in an angry voice, and running forward she seized the little girl in
her arms, and carried her off screaming and kicking into the house.

[Illustration: Chapter decoration.]

CHAPTER XII.

THE FIREWORKS.

A little before seven o'clock that evening the children stood at the
drawing-room window. All traces of the recent struggle in the garden
had been removed, and in the neat little girl in the dainty cream
lace and muslin frock, with its fluttering pink ribbons, few persons
would have recognized the small fury that Sophie had carried off
wriggling and crying to the nursery a few hours before.

But Miss Bunny had already forgotten that such a scene had ever
taken place, and was making very merry over a big blue-bottle fly
that she and Mervyn were doing their best to catch as it walked up
and down the window-pane.

Frank Collins sat at the piano playing some very lively tunes, and
from time to time Bunny would pause in her pursuit of the fly and
dance lightly over the floor in time to the music.

"Papa, papa," she cried, as Mr. Dashwood entered the room with his
wife upon his arm, "doesn't Frank make lovely tunes?"

"I don't know, dear," answered her father. "Frank does not seem
anxious to