she did not mean to
do wrong in taking him.

But when the Bunny was taken out of Rosa's pocket and set on the supper
table in the light, he looked around him. It was quite a different home
from Madeline's--not nearly so nice, the Candy Rabbit thought, but of
course he dared say nothing.

"Ah, what a fine Rabbit! Where did you get him?" asked Rosa's father.

"He was thrown away on a veranda of a house where I got no pennies," she
answered. "No one wanted him, so I took him."

"He is a fine Candy Rabbit," said Joe, the peddler, looking at the
Bunny. "He is almost new. I guess he came from an Easter novelty
counter. Once I sold Easter toys, but now I sell only pins and needles.
Yes, he is a fine Rabbit, Rosa. Are you going to eat him? He is made of
candy."

"Eat him! Oh, no! I am going to keep him, always!" said the little girl,
hugging the Rabbit in her arms.

The Bunny liked to be hugged and petted, and, though he would rather
have been in Madeline's house, still he was glad the little organ girl
liked him.

"Nobody wanted the Rabbit, so I took him," said Rosa, and she really
thought this was so.

But of course Madeline wanted her Candy Rabbit very much. And when she
and Dorothy and Mirabell came back to the veranda after their play in
the sand pile and found the Sawdust Doll there and the Bunny gone, poor
Madeline felt very bad indeed. She cried, and she looked all over for
her Easter toy, but he was not to be found.

At first Madeline thought perhaps her brother or one of the other boys
had taken the Bunny to tie to the kite again, but Herbert said that he
and his chums had not seen the toy.

Then Madeline thought perhaps Carlo, the little dog, had carried the
Bunny away, as once he carried off the Sawdust Doll, but this could not
have happened, as Carlo had been kept chained in his kennel all that
day.

"Well, my Candy Rabbit is gone, and I wish I could find him, and I'm
awful lonesome without him," sobbed Madeline, and she was not happy even
when her mother said she or Aunt Emma would buy her another.

And all the while the organ grinder's little girl had the Candy Rabbit.
And that night, when the time came for Rosa to go to bed, she looked for
a safe place to put the Easter toy. The little girl saw the big basket
of the peddler in a corner of the room.

"I'll put the Candy Rabbit on one of the pin cushions in Uncle Joe's
basket," said Rosa to herself. "He can sleep there all night. To-morrow
I will