dripping with cold muffin batter, and more miserable and frightened
than I had ever been before in my whole life.

I could hear excited voices in the dining-room. When Miss Patricia
first struck me with the umbrella, Phil had cried out: "Stop that! You
stop hitting my monkey!" Then as she chased me around the room, making
vain attempts to reach me as I scampered over chairs and up curtains,
he seemed to grow wild with rage. He was fairly beside himself and
bristled up like an angry little fighting-cock. "You're a mean old
thing," he shrieked, breaking over all bounds of respect, and
screaming out his words so loud that his father, passing through the
hall, heard the impudent rhyme he had made up the day before:

"Old Aunt Pat,
You're mean as a rat!"

It was just as he yelled this that the cook opened the pantry door,
and I made my fatal plunge into the dark and the crock of muffin
batter.

As I hid behind the spice-boxes I heard Doctor Tremont tell Phil, in a
very stern voice, to march up-stairs, and stay there until he came for
him. It must have been nearly an hour that I hid on that shelf,
waiting for a chance to make my escape. The batter began to harden and
cake on me until I could not move without every hair on my body
pulling painfully.

Things were set to rights in the dining-room after awhile and the
family had supper. Some bread and milk were sent up to Phil. Soon
after I reached the laundry, Stuart found me there. He turned the