said Joe, with a
smile. "She did not mean to take yours, little girl. And now maybe you
want some needles or pins?" he said to Madeline's mother.

"Yes, I think I will buy a few, because you were so good as to bring
back my little girl's Easter present that was given her by her aunt,"
Mother said. And Joe was glad because he had sold something from his
basket.

Madeline was glad to get back her Candy Rabbit, and she stayed so long
looking at him that her mother said:

"You had better run on, or your little friends will grow impatient
waiting for you, my dear. Put your Rabbit away, and hurry along now."

So Madeline put her Rabbit on a shelf in the playroom, and went out to
play, and her mother gave Joe money for pins, needles and some
court-plaster.

"Maybe I have good luck and make a lot of money to-day, and then I buy
Rosa a nice Candy Rabbit for herself," the peddler said to himself, as
he went down the street.

And, while I am about it, I might as well tell you that Joe did buy Rosa
a nice Rabbit for herself. He took it home to her that night, lifting it
out of his basket and putting it into her hands.

When the organ grinder's little girl awakened and found that her peddler
uncle had gone, taking his basket and the Rabbit she had put to sleep in
it without his knowledge, Rosa felt very bad. She was sad as she
gathered pennies for her father that day.

But at night, when Uncle Joe came back with a new Candy Rabbit, Rosa was
happy again. And Madeline was happy with her own Easter toy.

Rosa's uncle and her father told her it was wrong to have taken another
little girl's toy without asking, and she was sorry when she understood
that, but she was happy with her new plaything.

In the afternoon Mirabell and Dorothy went home with Madeline.

"I want to show you my Candy Rabbit again," Madeline said to her little
girl chums.

And when Mirabell and Dorothy had looked at the Rabbit, seeing the speck
of green paint on one ear and the other ear that was a little bent from
the heat, Madeline said:

"I'm going to wash him!"

Without saying anything to her mother about it, Madeline took her Candy
Rabbit, and, with her two little friends, went up to the bathroom. She
drew the tub full of water, and while she was doing this she set the
Rabbit on a glass shelf near the towel rack.

"Are you going to let him swim in the bathtub?" asked Dorothy.

"Goodness me, I hope not!" thought the Candy Rabbit, who heard this