A BARGAIN 29

and, besides, if we both go home there will
be no chance of getting the others back.
Pll tell you what, nurse! You go home
and have some milk brought down here in
a can, and, if you like, you can bring some
people to help, and then if I am not back,
they can catch all the frogs in the pond and
take them to the Palace, so that the doctors
can find out which are my brothers and
sisters, and how they can be cured. If I do
come back we can pay the hedgehog, and all
will be right’

Thenurse shook her head as she answered:
‘] don’t think nothing of folks as trusts the
children instead of the nurses. No good
never came of such things——’

But even as she spoke, she looked down
on the pond and saw the little frogs bobbing
up and down, and heard them croaking, and
thought how that she knew her little nurs-
lings were there, and that if Hurly-Burly
could not get them back by the hedgehog’s
help, they would very likely have to stay
there for ever. There, too, lay the hedge-
hog right before her. He was a living
reality, at all events, and mzght be able to
help. She had never heard an animal of