d.

The kitten was a soft, furry one, but it was rather mussed and
bedraggled now, from the way Margy had mauled it. And the little Bunker
girl was rather tousled herself, for there was not much room underneath
the stand where she had crawled.

"Oh, my dear Margy!" cried Mrs. Bunker. "You are such a sight!"

"But I got my kittie!" said the little girl.

By this time quite a crowd had gathered around the six little Bunkers
and their father and mother. Margy still sat on the sidewalk, with the
kitten in her lap, petting and rubbing it.

"Come! We must hurry!" exclaimed Mr. Bunker. "We may miss the boat. Get
up, Margy. Rose, you help your mother dust Margy off, and then we must
hurry."

"Can't I take the kittie?" asked the little girl.

"No, dear," answered her mother. "It isn't yours. And besides, we never
could take it to Cousin Tom's with us. Put it down, Margy, my dear!"

"Oh, oh, I don't want to!" cried the little girl, and real tears came
into her eyes. "I got this kittie out of a dark corner, and it loves me
and I love it! I want it."

"But you can't take it," said Daddy Bunker. "The kittie must stay here.
It belongs to the fruit stand. It's your cat, isn't it?" he asked the
Italian.

"My keeten? No. I have no keeten. I sell banan', orange, apple! You buy
some I give you keetie. Me no want!"

"No, and we don't want it, either," said Mrs. Bunker. "I was hoping it
was yours so you could say you had to keep it here to drive the mice
away. If Margy thought it was yours she wouldn't want to take it away."

"Ah, I see!" exclaimed the Italian with a smile. "All right, I keep the
keeten," and he said the name in a funny way.

"There, Margy!" exclaimed her father. "You see you'll have to leave the
kitten here to keep the mice away from the oranges."

"Can't I take it to Cousin Tom's with me?"

"No. And you must put it down quickly, and hurry, or we shall miss the
boat."

Margy started to cry, but the Italian, who seemed to understand
children, quickly offered her a big, yellow orange. Then Margy let go of
the kitten, and the fruit man quickly picked it up and put it down in a
little box out of sight.

"She no see--she no want," he whispered to Mrs. Bunker.

"I want an orange!" exclaimed Mun Bun, seeing Margy beginning to eat
hers. "I likes oranges!"

"All right, we'll all have some," said Mr. Bunker. It seemed like
disappointing the stand-owner to go away without buying some, after all
that had gone