"No, no!" screamed Molly, throwing her two fat arms round Fred, at the
same time crying, "Run away Freddie, quick! run away."

Now considering that Fred had the doll and the kitten in his lap, and
his sister's arms around his neck, it wasn't strange that the little
fellow didn't run.

"I'll give you ten dollars for this boy," said the great man, unwinding
Molly's arms, and picking fat Fred up, and thrusting him like a roll of
cotton batting under his arm.

Molly screamed and--and--well--she woke.

She hadn't been swinging on the gate at all; there wasn't any horrid,
_rusty_-faced man standing by her; she had been asleep in school and
dreaming.

But she couldn't believe it; and with all Miss Winche's kind coaxing,
she wouldn't lift her face from her desk, and would only sob, "I want my
Freddie! I want my Freddie!"

The funniest part of it was, the child hadn't been asleep five minutes.
She had been idly listening to a spelling class, and just after the
word "_sail_" dropped into a nap.

By the way, perhaps I should not omit to mention that before she went to
school that morning she had declared to her mother that boys were
_bothers_; no wonder! baby Willie, at breakfast, had punched his little
fist down into her mug, spilled the milk, and sent the mug crashing on
the floor. Johnny had taken the orange out of her sacque pocket, and she