ut
her dolls; she had three--Rose, Mattie, and Katie--but Rose's frocks
were very dirty, Mattie had a leg broken, and Katie's paint had been all
washed off one wet night, when Olly left her out on the lawn. Now which
of these was the tidiest and most respectable doll to take out on a
visit? Milly did not know how to settle it.

[Illustration: "'I can't do without my toys, Nana'"]

"I think, Nana," she said at last to her nurse, who was packing the
children's trunk, "I will take Katie. Mother always sends us away when
we get white faces to make us look nice and red again; so, perhaps, if I
take Katie her colour will come back too, you know."

"Perhaps it will, Miss Milly," said nurse, laughing; "anyhow, you had
better give me the doll you want directly, for it is time I packed all
the toys now. Now, Master Olly, you know I can't let you take all those
things."

For there was Olly dragging along his wheelbarrow heaped up with toys
with one hand, and his cart and horse with a box of bricks standing up
in it with the other. He would not listen to what Milly said about it,
and he would scarcely listen to nurse now.

"I can't do without my toys, Nana. I _must_ do mischief if you won't let
me take all my toys; I can't help it."

"I haven't got room for half those, Master Olly, and you'll have ever so
many new things to play with when we get to Ravensnest."

"There'll be the new children, Olly," said Milly, "and the little rivers
and all the funny new flowers."

"Those aren't toys," said Olly, looking ready to cry. "I don't know
nothing about them."

"Now," said nurse, making a place in the box, "bring me your bricks and
your big ball, and your picture-books. There, that's all I can spare
you."

"Wait one minute," said Olly, rushing off; and just then Mrs. Norton
called nurse away to speak to her in the drawing-room. When nurse came
back she saw nobody in the nursery. Milly had gone out in the garden,
Olly was nowhere to be seen. And who had shut down the trunk, which was
open when she left it? Me-ow, sounded very softly from somewhere close
by.

"Why--Spot! Spot!" called nurse.

Me-ow, Me-ow, came again; a sad choky little mew, right from the middle
of the children's trunk. "Master Olly and his tricks again," said nurse,
running to the box and opening it. There, on the top, lay a quantity of
frocks that nurse had left folded up on the floor, thrown in anyhow,
with some toys scattered among them, and the frocks