“Don’t cry so, you dear little girl; there is no harm done,” said Mrs. Chick. “Why, Jimmy-boy! I wish you were asleep. Run right back to bed, and don’t be so scared. Sister wasn’t hurt a bit.”

All this while Mrs. Chick, having undressed Edith, was rocking her in her arms like a baby.

“I was a naughty, heedless girl,” said Edith. “I ought to have told you mamma never trusts me with any kind of a light except a taper in a tumbler. But I thought I was going to be so careful this time.”

“’Twas all my fault, dearie. I knew you weren’t one of the stop-to-think kind. You’ll learn by and by,” replied Mrs. Chick soothingly, as she placed the trembling, exhausted child in bed between lavender-scented sheets, and turned to leave her.

“’Twas all my fault,” repeated the good woman to herself. “Thank Heaven no harm came of it! but I should think I was old enough to know better. I’m so weak-minded about children; can’t deny ’em anything they ask for!

“Now, there’s that cream. I’ve no business to let Jimmy churn it to-morrow morning. Something will happen to it, as sure as my name’s Biddy Chick; and I can’t afford to lose the cream. It needs a steady hand to bring butter, and I’ll do the churning myself before he wakes up.”

After this exciting adventure with the candle, it was some time before the children could compose themselves to go to sleep. Mrs. Chick had planned to do an unusual amount of work next day, and wanted an early breakfast; but she had not the heart to waken her young guests.

“Let ’em have a good rest, poor little things! I remember how I used to hate to be called up when I was a child; though, to be sure, I knew I’d got to work, and that makes a difference. Bless me! how I did have to work!”

It was eight o’clock, and the sun was quite high, when the children sat down to their breakfast of omelet and waffles. The maple-sirup had been forgotten after all, and Mrs. Chick had to go up-stairs for it.

“I’ve saved the cream for you to churn, Master Jimmy,” said she, watching his smiles as she spoke.

“I ought to have got it out of the way by half-past five, and all made into balls; but I don’t have a nice little boy like you come visiting me every day, and I can’t bear to disappoint you.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Chick,” said Jimmy.

He supposed it would be nothing but fun to make butter, and secretly hoped he might be allowed to pat it into balls.

After breakfast he followed his kind hostess into the shed, and saw her pour a jar of rich cream into the green churn. She placed a chair for Jimmy beside the churn.

“All you’ve got to do,” said she, “is to turn the handle of the churn ’round and ’round and ’round.”

“Oh, that’s nothing; I can do it just as easy,” replied Jimmy.

Mrs. Chick laughed.

“It’s harder than you think, little dear. But when you are tired of it you can let me know. I shall be close by in the kitchen, making pies.”

“Look here! see what I’m doing! You never churned any butter, now did you, Edy?”

“No,” said Edith; “and I don’t want to. I’d rather help Mrs. Chick make pies.”

For two minutes Jimmy was triumphant.

“How easy it goes! How well I do it!” he thought. “My arms must be pretty strong.”

But nobody was there to hear or see him. Mrs. Chick had gone into the kitchen, and was talking to Edith about buttering the plates for the pies. Through the open shed door he espied the kid nibbling leaves from some low bushes. The little Morse baby, who never stayed at home if she could help it, had brought her black doll just inside Mrs. Chick’s yard, and was rolling her in the sand.

“What a dirty baby to do that!” thought Jimmy.

Still he almost wished she would come into the shed; he did not enjoy being alone.

He turned the handle of the churn ’round and ’round and ’round. He was growing tired.

“Mrs. Chick!” he called out, “I think the butter is done.”

But Mrs. Chick paid no attention. She was telling Edy how hard she used to work when she was a little girl named Biddy Roberts, and lived in England.

“Perhaps,” said she to Edy, “they wouldn’t have called me Biddy if they had known I was going to marry a man by the name of Chick!”

“Mrs. Chick!” called Jimmy again.

“Well, what is it, dear?” said she from the kitchen.

“The butter’s done, I guess. Will you please come and see if the butter is done?”

Mrs. Chick was very busy. She had put some pie-crust on a deep plate, and was scalloping the crust into a kind of high wall all around the plate, ready to hold a rich custard.

“I think it’s done; I do truly,” repeated Jimmy.

“No, sonny; the butter can’t have come yet. What are you doing? Don’t take off the cover of the churn, Jimmy-boy. Only keep on turning the handle ’round and ’round and ’round.”

“Why, that’s just what I did do! Why, I’ve turned it ’round forty-two hundred times. I know I have. Can’t I stop now and get a drink of water?”

Mrs. Chick laughed. She was a woman who laughed very easily.

“Yes; get some water if you like.”

There was a large olla (oya) in one corner of the shed, covered by a white soup-plate. The water in it was always cold. Jimmy left the churn at once, and went to the olla, and stood to take a long breath. Then he ran to the pantry for a tumbler; he did not like to drink from the tin dipper which sat in the soup-plate.

But while he was gone for the tumbler, the Morse baby slipped into the shed, making hardly any noise. She came in with that dirty, dirty doll, as full of sand as a pepper-box is full of pepper. She climbed into Jimmy’s chair, lifted the cover off the churn, which was only set on edgewise, and said, “Diny, oo go in dare!”

And then she plumped Dinah head-first into the churn.

Nobody heard or saw her. What made her do it? It is of no use trying to guess. She might have thought such a sandy doll ought to have a bath. Or perhaps she was making believe Dinah had been naughty, and she was shutting her up in the closet.

At any rate, as soon as the miserable black object was safe in the churn, Baby Morse ran away to chase the kid, and forgot all about her doll.

When Jimmy had drunk two tumblers of water, and rested a long while,—for he was not in the least haste,—he went back to the churn.

The cover was off.

“I did not know I took that off,” said he. And he put it on again quickly.

Then he turned the handle ’round and ’ro-ound and ’ro-o-ound. But how ha-rd it went! Much harder than before. How heavy the cream had grown all at once! Mrs. Chick had warned Jimmy that it would seem to grow very heavy at the last.

“Do come, Mrs. Chick!” he cried eagerly. “The butter’s done now. I know it’s done. It breaks my arm off to turn it ’round.”

Mrs. Chick had just put her second pie into the oven. She went out to the shed, wondering what Jimmy meant, for she was sure the butter had not come. She took off the cover of the churn and looked in.

“Why! what’s this?” cried she.

She put in her hand then, and drew out that dirty, dirty doll.

She could not help laughing, though she was very sorry. It was quite too bad to spoil so much cream, and she was by no means a rich woman.

“I’m glad I didn’t put in all my cream,” she thought. “I had sense enough to save out half of it.”

But she was just as much amused as either of the children. She never was cross or sad, whatever happened.

“Of course Baby Morse has been here,” said she; “nobody else would cut up such a caper. But I haven’t seen her or heard a sound of her all the morning.”

“I saw her,” said Jimmy. “She was playing in the dirt with that horrid black thing; but who’d ’a’ thought of her dropping it in the churn?”

Then they had another hearty laugh, all three of them; and Jimmy never dreamed that he had been at all to blame. The cream was the color of Mrs. Chick’s gray gown. She poured it into a pan, to save it for the animals, and then washed the churn.

“I won’t scold the boy; it was all my own fault,” thought she. “It’s well I’m going to take these children home to-day. If they were to stay here much longer, I should let ’em pull the house down over my head.—Do you hear what I say, Biddy Chick?”

Mrs. Dunlee was very much surprised that afternoon to see Edy walk into the house wrapped in an old shawl of Mrs. Chick’s, which almost tripped her up at every step.

“O mamma!” she cried, throwing up her arms, “my dress was just burnt off me! The back of it, I mean.”

And while Mrs. Chick was trying to tell the story, Edith began to laugh and cry wildly.

“O mamma!” said she, casting herself on her mother’s neck, “you always did just right with me; you knew best when you wouldn’t trust me with candles and things. I am the careless-est girl!”

“There! I’m glad you’ve found it out,” retorted Kyzie. “You never believed it when anybody else said so.”

Mamma raised a warning finger, and Kyzie was ashamed, and held her peace. She was the dearest girl in the world, but liked to lecture Edith; and Mrs. Dunlee thought Edith did not need any lectures now. She was feeling very humble.

“O mamma!” she went on, “I should think you’d tie my feet and hands with a rope! yes, I should! Too bad I burnt up Mrs. Chick’s pretty rug! But then, oh, dear! just think, you know, if there hadn’t been any rug!”

To divert their minds, Mrs. Chick told the story of Jimmy’s butter. They were much amused; but the funniest part of it was to hear her say,—

“But it was all my fault. I needn’t have been so weak-minded.”

When she left next morning there was a roll under the wagon-seat done up in brown paper. She had not known that the roll was there till she got home, when she found it contained a beautiful rug—a far better one than had been burned.

“Just like Mrs. Dunlee! She knew if I should see it before I came away I should hate to take it. And what’s this? A bran new shawl! Well, well, well! She’s a good woman, if there is one. Do you hear what I say, Biddy Chick?”