ried an umbrella
in her hand. Phil and little Elsie followed her.

"Oh, you little torment!" she cried, when she saw me, and, before I
could make up my mind which way to jump, she flew at me with her
umbrella, trying to strike me without breaking any of the dishes. I
dodged this way and that. Seeing no way of escape from the room,
I ran up the curtains, over and under the chairs, around and
around,--anywhere to keep out of her way. She was after me at every
step. When I ran up to the top of the high, carved back of the
old-fashioned sideboard, I found myself out of her reach for one
breathless minute. She was climbing on a chair after me, when the
cook, hearing the unusual sounds, opened the pantry door and looked
in.

[Illustration: "'OH, YOU LITTLE TORMENT!' SHE CRIED."]

It was my only chance of escape, and, regardless of where I might
land, I leaped wildly out. I escaped Miss Patricia's umbrella, it is
true, but, just my luck, I went bump into the cook's face, and then
into the crock of muffin batter which she held in her arms. She
dropped us both with a scream which brought everybody in the house
hurrying to the dining-room, and I scuttled up to the highest shelf of
the pantry, where I crouched trembling, behind some spice-boxes. I was
dripping with cold muffin batter, and more miserable and frightened
than I had ever been before in my whole life.

I could hear excited voices in the dining-room. When Miss Patricia
first struck me with the umbrella, Phil had cried out: "Stop that! You
stop hitting my monkey!" Then as she chased me around the room, making
vain attempts to reach me as I scampered over chairs and up curtains,
he seemed to grow wild with rage. He was fairly beside himself and
bristled up like an angry little fighting-cock. "You're a mean old
thing," he shrieked, breaking over all bounds of respect, and
screaming out his words so loud that his father, passing through the
hall, heard the impudent rhyme he had made up the day before:

"Old Aunt Pat,
You're mean as a rat!"

It was just as he yelled this that the cook opened the pantry door,
and I made my fatal plunge into the dark and the crock of muffin
batter.

As I hid behind the spice-boxes I heard Doctor Tremont tell Phil, in a
very stern voice, to march up-stairs, and stay there until he came for
him. It must have been nearly an hour that I hid on that shelf,
waiting for a chance to make my escape. The batter began to harden and
cak