Page:Nine Unlikely Tales.djvu/255

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THE TOWN IN THE LIBRARY
247

blocks that kind Uncle Thomas gave you, but you must not touch the two top-drawers of the bureau. Now don’t forget. And if you’re good you shall have tea with me, and perhaps there will be cake. Now you will be good, won’t you?”

Fabian and Rosamund promised faithfully that they would be very good and that they would not touch the two top-drawers, and Mother went away to see about the flannel petticoats and the tea and snuff and tobacco and things. When the children were left alone, Fabian said—

“I am going to be very good, I shall be much more good than Mother expects me to.”

“We won’t look in the drawers,” said Rosamund, stroking the shiny top of the bureau.

“We won’t even think about the insides of the drawers,” said Fabian. He stroked the bureau too and his fingers left four long streaks on it, because he had been eating toffee.

“I suppose,” he said presently, “we may open the two bottom drawers? Mother couldn’t have made a mistake—could she?”

So they opened the two bottom drawers just to be sure that Mother hadn’t made a