Dot, and the
four ate as many sweet summer apples as four small people could who
had eaten breakfast less than an hour before.

"There's Poots," said Meg suddenly, glancing up and seeing the black
cat picking her way through the grass. "Do you suppose she is hunting
birds?"

Poots blinked her green eyes innocently. If she were after birds, she
had no intention of catching any before an audience. She sat down and
began to wash her face.

A mischievous idea seized Twaddles.

"Rats, Spotty!" he shouted. "Rats!"

Now rats sounds pretty much like "cats," and the excited and startled
Spotty did not stop to question which word Twaddles had used. He
jumped up, his ears pointing forward.

"Rats, sic 'em!" said bad little Twaddles. "Rats, Spotty!"

Spotty barked twice sharply. Poots arose, her fur bristling. Spotty
leaped at her, barking playfully. Away ran Poots, her black tail
sticking straight up in the air. And after them raced the four little
Blossoms, shouting and calling frantically.

Poots ran straight for the front wall and scrambled up it, leaving
Spotty to bark wildly on the ground and make futile rushes at the
solid wall he couldn't hope to climb. Some of the masonry was loose,
and Poots, digging with her sharp claws, sent down a shower of dust
into the dog's eyes. He whined, and dug at his eyes with both
forepaws. Then he sneezed several times.

"You will chase me, will you?" Poots seemed to say, gazing down at him
from her safe position. "The idea!"

"Well, we might as well pick up some of this stuff," said Twaddles,
knowing that the fun was over.

"It's cooler--just feel that breeze!" exclaimed Meg. "Let's ask Aunt
Polly if we can't go berrying after dinner."

Aunt Polly obligingly said they could, and after dinner the four
little Blossoms scrambled into overalls Aunt Polly had bought and
shortened to fit them.

"I wish your mother could see you," she said, as she gave them each a
bright tin pail. "No need to worry about your dress now, is there,
Dot?"

"Going berrying?" asked Jud, as they passed him, clipping the green
hedge around the kitchen garden. "Better keep out of the sun."

The children walked down the road and turned into another field. They
knew where the blackberry bushes grew, and they meant to fill their
pails.

"Let's start here by this fence," suggested Bobby. "What's that over
in Mr. Simmond's field?"

"It's a bull," answered Meg who knew all the animals at Brookside and
o