here's mamma?" asked the little girl.

"In de drawin'-room, Miss Gracie. Comp'ny dar."

"Oh, dear!" sighed Gracie, "I just wanted her to talk to me."

"'Spect you hab to wait till de comp'ny am gone," returned Agnes, picking
up her empty clothes-basket and leaving the room.

Gracie wandered disconsolately about the rooms, wishing that the callers
would go and mamma come up. Presently she paused before the bureau in
Violet's dressing-room, and began fingering the pretty things on it.

She was not usually a meddlesome child, but just now was tempted to
mischief from the lack of something else to interest and employ her.

She handled the articles carefully, however, and did them no damage till
she came to a beautiful cut-glass bottle filled with a costly perfume of
which she was extravagantly fond.

Violet had frequently given her a few drops on her handkerchief without
being asked, and never refused a request for it.

Gracie, seized with a desire for it, took a clean handkerchief from a
drawer and helped herself, saying half aloud, by way of quieting her
conscience, "Mamma would give it to me if she was here, she always does,
and I'll be careful not to break the bottle."

She was pouring from it as she spoke. Just at that instant she heard a
step in the hall without, and a sound as if a hand was laid on the
door-knob.

It so startled her that the bottle slipped from her fingers, and striking
the bureau as it fell, lay in fragments at her feet; its contents were
spilled upon the carpet, and the air of the room was redolent of the
delicious perfume.

Gracie, naturally a timid child, shrinking from everything like reproof or
punishment, stood aghast at the mischief she had wrought.

"What will mamma say?" was her first thought. "Oh, I'm afraid she will be
so vexed with me that she'll never love me any more!" And the tears came
thick and fast, for mamma's love was very sweet to the little feeble
child, who had been so long without a mother's care and tenderness.

Then arose the wish to hide her fault. Oh, if she could only replace the
bottle! but that was quite impossible. Perhaps, though, there might be a
way found to conceal the fact that she was the author of the mishap; she
did not want to have any one else blamed for her fault, but she would like
not to be suspected of it herself.

A bright thought struck her. She had seen the cat jump on that bureau a
few days before and walk back and forth over it. If sh