On the whole, Sunday was a sweet and pleasant day, and the children thought so; but, from its being so much quieter than other days, they always got up on Monday full of life and mischief and ready to fizz over at any minute, like champagne bottles with the wires just cut.

This particular Monday was rainy, so there couldn’t be any outdoor play, which was the usual vent for overhigh spirits. The little ones, cooped up in the nursery all the afternoon, had grown perfectly riotous. Philly was not quite well, and had been taking medicine. The medicine was called Elixir Pro. It was a great favourite with Aunt Izzie, who kept a bottle of it always on hand. The bottle was large and black, with a paper label tied round its neck, and the children shuddered at the sight of it.

After Phil had stopped roaring and spluttering, and play had begun again, the dolls, as was only natural, were taken ill also, and so was ‘Pikery’, John’s little yellow chair, which she always pretended was a doll too. She kept an old apron tied on his back, and generally took him to bed with her – not into bed, that would have been troublesome, but close by, tied to the bedpost. Now, as she told the others, Pikery was very sick indeed. He must have some medicine, just like Philly.

‘Give him some water,’ suggested Dorry.

‘No,’ said John decidedly, ‘it must be black and out of a bottle, or it won’t do any good.’

After thinking a moment, she trotted quietly across the passage into Aunt Izzie’s room. Nobody was there, but John knew where the Elixir Pro was kept – in the closet on the third shelf. She pulled one of the drawers out a little, climbed up, and reached it down. The children were enchanted when she marched back, the bottle in one hand, the cork in the other, and proceeded to pour a liberal dose on to Pikery’s wooden seat, which John called his lap.

‘There! there! my poor boy,’ she said, patting his shoulder – I mean his arm, ‘swallow it down – it’ll do you good.’

Just then Aunt Izzie came in, and to her dismay saw a long trickle of something dark and sticky running down on to the carpet. It was Pikery’s medicine, which he had refused to swallow.

‘What is that?’ she asked sharply.

‘My baby is sick,’ faltered John, displaying the guilty bottle.

Aunt Izzie rapped her over the head with a thimble and told her that she was a very naughty child, whereupon Johnnie pouted and cried a little. Aunt Izzie wiped up the slop, and, taking away the Elixir, retired with it to her closet, saying that she ‘never knew anything like it – it was always so on Mondays’.

What further pranks were played in the nursery that day I cannot pretend to tell. But late in the afternoon a dreadful screaming was heard, and when people rushed from all parts of the house to see what was the matter, behold the nursery door was locked, and nobody could get in. Aunt Izzie called through the key-hole to have it opened, but the roars were so loud that it was long before she could get an answer. At last Elsie, sobbing violently, explained that Dorry had locked the door, and now the key wouldn’t turn and they couldn’t open it. Would they have to stay there always, and starve?

‘Of course you won’t, you foolish child,’ exclaimed Aunt Izzie. ‘Dear, dear! what on earth will come next? Stop crying, Elsie; do you hear me? You shall all be got out in a few minutes.’

And sure enough, the next thing came a rattling at the blinds, and there was Alexander, the hired man, standing outside on a tall ladder and nodding his head at the children. The little ones forgot their fright. They flew to open the window and frisked and jumped about Alexander as he climbed in and unlocked the door. It struck them as being such a fine thing to be let out in this way, that Dorry began to rather plume himself for fastening them in.

But Aunt Izzie didn’t take this view of the case. She scolded them well, and declared they were troublesome children, who couldn’t be trusted one moment out of sight, and that she was more than half sorry she had promised to go to the lecture that evening. ‘How do I know,’ she concluded, ‘that before I come home you won’t have set the house on fire, or killed somebody?’

‘Oh, no we won’t! no we won’t!’ whined the children, quite moved by this frightful picture. But bless you – ten minutes afterward they had forgotten all about it.

All this time Katy had been sitting on the ledge of the bookcase in the library, poring over a book. It was called Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered. The man who wrote it was an Italian, but somebody had done the story over into English. It was rather a queer book for a little girl to take a fancy to, but somehow Katy liked it very much. It told about knights, and ladies, and giants, and battles, and made her feel hot and cold by turns as she read, and as if she must rush at something, and shout, and strike blows. Katy was naturally fond of reading.