She sent Chloe to the closet for a jar of wine, and some goat's-milk
cheese, and she herself went upstairs to get some dried figs from the
store-room. Daphne followed Chloe to the closet, and for a moment there
was no one beside the hearth-fire but Dion and Argos, and the sausages
smelled very good indeed.

"I wonder if she counted them," thought Dion to himself, as he looked
longingly at them. And then almost before he knew it himself he had
snatched one of the sausages from the fire and had bitten a piece off the
end! It was so very hot that it burned both his fingers and his tongue
like everything, and when he tried to lick his fingers, he let go of the
sausage, and Argos snapped it up and swallowed it whole. It burned all
the way down to his stomach, and Argos gave a dreadful howl of pain and
dashed through the door out into the farm-yard. Dion heard his Mother's
footsteps coming down the stair. He thought perhaps he'd better join
Argos.

When Lydia reached the hearth-fire once more, only Daphne was in the
room. She set down the basket of figs and knelt to turn the sausages. She
had counted them and she saw at once that one was missing. She was
shocked and surprised, but she guessed what had become of it. Mothers
are just like that. She rose from her knees and looked around for the
culprit. She saw Daphne.

"You naughty boy!" she said sternly to Daphne. "What have you done with
that sausage?"

"I didn't do anything with it; I never even saw it," cried poor Daphne.
"And, besides that, I'm not a naughty boy. I'm not a boy at all! I'm
Daphne!"