he was so little.

But in Hide-and-Seek he would have a better chance. He had always
liked that game ever since he had known how to play anything. He was a
good little fellow for hiding, and he knew it.

When the game had begun, and all the children--except the biggest
girl, who was standing in a corner, with her hands before her face,
counting as fast as she could, and hoping that she would come to one
hundred before everybody had hidden themselves--had scampered off to
various hiding-places, Bob still stood in the middle of the
kitchen-floor, wondering where in the world he should go to! All of a
sudden--the girl in the corner had already reached sixty-four--he
thought he would go down in the cellar.

There was no rule against that--at least none that he knew of--and so,
slipping softly to the cellar-door, over in the darkest corner of the
kitchen, he opened it, and went softly down the steps.

There was a little light on the steps, for Bob did not shut the door
quite tightly after him, and if there had been none at all, he would
have been quite as well pleased. He was not afraid of the dark, and
all that now filled his mind was the thought of getting somewhere
where no one could possibly find him. So he groped his way under the
steps, and there he squatted down in the darkness, behind two barrels
which stood in a corner.

"Now," thought Bob, "she won't find me--easy."

He waited there a good while, and the longer he waited the prouder he