ack splotch which she now knew was not Blackame.

"Where is Robert?" asked Miss Selina. "He dashed out of the carriage and
through here, and he must have gone out by the window. And you _must_
have been asleep, or you would have heard him."

Bab remembered the sound of the rush through the window, and she saw now
a spill of ink just by the place where the book had been. But Robert
could not have been there, because she was talking to the fairy at the
very time, and she must have noticed him, and felt him greatly in the
way.

When it was past seven o'clock, Bab slipped away, and took Mr.
Beresford's alpenstock out of the stand in the hall, and beat about the
branches of the elms and horse-chestnuts, and danced and sang, holding
her dress up, and did everything exactly as the fairy had told her to
do, and as you will see her doing in the picture.

[Illustration: "SHE STOOD BY HIM."]

But she had not been dancing and singing (Bab often recalled the scene,
when she was older, with pleasure) more than about twenty minutes before
Aunt Anastasia put her head out of the window, and told her to come in.

It was _much_ pleasanter to be dancing for the fairies up and down, with
outstretched frock, than to go into the house and find Blackame still on
the page, and have to confess she brought him there, and be in disgrace
for it.

Mr. Beresford held out a kind hand to her, and drew her to his side.

The book, when Mr. Beresford took it in his hands, naturally opened at
the page where it had been lying open that morning so long, and there
were all the fairies and butterflies lying flat and beautiful, and the
verses in the middle of the page. But there, instead of Blackame, were
five or six Blackames perhaps, intertwining together like the fairies
and the butterflies, but bearing to mortal eyes nothing but the
appearance of a thick smudge of ink.

"Oh, I didn't do that!" cried poor little Bab, and burst into tears.

"Who did, then?" inquired Mr. Beresford, quickly.

"Why, I saw Robert with the book in the hall soon after we came home,"
cried Selina, on impulse.

"Did you do it, Robert?" asked Mr. Beresford.

"Why does she say she didn't do it, and begin to blubber?" cried Robert,
politely designating Bab over his shoulder. "Wasn't she left at home?
Who could do it but she?"

"Because I _saw_ you do it," replied Mr. Beresford, and Robert's white
face became scarlet--the mean little fellow as he stood there before
them,