Page:Piccino and Other Child Stories (1897).djvu/157

Rh will be roses, and more roses, and we will make a little house under here and have a tea-party."

We were always going to look at that rosebush, and sometimes, when we were playing and jumping, Betty would think she saw a bud beginning to come out, and we would both run.

I don't know how many days we were so happy together, playing ball, and jumping in the grass, and watching the white rose-bush to see how the buds were growing. Perhaps it was a long time, but I was only a kitten, and I was too frisky to know about time. But I grew faster than the rose-buds did. Betty said so. But oh, how happy we were! If it could only have lasted, perhaps I might never have grown sober, and sat by the fire thinking so much.

One afternoon we had the most beautiful play we had ever had. We ran after the ball, we swung together, Betty knelt down on the grass and shook her curly hair so that I could catch at it with my paws, we had a tea-party on the box, and when it was over we went to the rose-bush and found a bud beginning to be a rose. It was a splendid afternoon!

After we had found the bud beginning to be a rose we sat down together under the rose-bush. Betty sat on the thick green grass, and I lay comfortably on her soft lap and purred.

"We have jumped so much that I am a little