"Where is Robert?" asked Miss Selina. "He dashed out of the carriage and through here, and he must have gone out by the window. And you _must_ have been asleep, or you would have heard him."
Bab remembered the sound of the rush through the window, and she saw now a spill of ink just by the place where the book had been. But Robert could not have been there, because she was talking to the fairy at the very time, and she must have noticed him, and felt him greatly in the way.
When it was past seven o'clock, Bab slipped away, and took Mr. Beresford's alpenstock out of the stand in the hall, and beat about the branches of the elms and horse-chestnuts, and danced and sang, holding her dress up, and did everything exactly as the fairy had told her to do, and as you will see her doing in the picture.
But she had not been dancing and singing (Bab often recalled the scene, when she was older, with pleasure) more than about twenty minutes before Aunt Anastasia put her head out of the window, and told her to come in.
It was _much_ pleasanter to be dancing for the fairies up and down, with outstretched frock, than to go into the house and find Blackamè still on the page, and have to confess she brought him there, and be in disgrace for it.
Mr. Beresford held out a kind hand to her, and drew her to his side.
The book, when Mr. Beresford took it in his hands, naturally opened at the page where it had been lying open that morning so long, and there were all the fairies and butterflies lying flat and beautiful, and the verses in the middle of the page. But there, instead of Blackamè, were five or six Blackamès perhaps, intertwining together like the fairies and the butterflies, but bearing to mortal eyes nothing but the appearance of a thick smudge of ink.
"Oh, I didn't do that!" cried poor little Bab, and burst into tears.
"Who did, then?" inquired Mr. Beresford, quickly.
"Why, I saw Robert with the book in the hall soon after we came home," cried Selina, on impulse.
"Did you do it, Robert?" asked Mr. Beresford.
"Why does she say she didn't do it, and begin to blubber?" cried Robert, politely designating Bab over his shoulder. "Wasn't she left at home? Who could do it but she?"
"Because I _saw_ you do it," replied Mr. Beresford, and Robert's white face became scarlet--the mean little fellow as he stood there before them, who had committed a fault, and then tried to lay the blame on a girl. "Bab was lying back in her chair fast asleep, and with bright smiles on her face, that showed that she was having happy dreams, when in you ran, jumped over desk, book, and all; threw a little of the ink across the page by a kick with your foot, then looking with dismay at your work, tucked the book under your arm, and jumped through the window with it."