"How cunning!" said Carrie. "I wish I had one; but I'd rather have a white mouse."
"The white mice are prettier, but then they are stupider than Belle's mouse," said Bessie. "They don't do much but eat and go to sleep. I don't think they are so very interesting."
"There's Daisy crying again," said Carrie. "Daisy, what's the matter now?" raising her voice.
Daisy only cried the louder, and the three children ran forward to where she sat upon the sand, the picture of woe; while Frankie, busily engaged in piling sand pies into his wagon, remained sublimely indifferent to her distress. Nellie, Maggie, and Lily came running back also to see what was the matter.
"What _are_ you crying for, Daisy?" asked Nellie. "Frankie, do you know what is the matter with her?"
"He told me he'd marry me if I let him mix the pies," sobbed the distressed Daisy; "and now he won't."
"Now, Daisy, you ought to be ashamed to say that," cried Frankie, stopping short with a pie in each hand, and looking with a much aggrieved air at his little playmate. "Yes, I did promise to marry her if she'd let me make the pies," he continued, turning to Nellie, "and so I will; but I promised three other girls before her, and so I told her she'd have to wait till they were all dead, and she wouldn't have patience, but just went and cried about it. I can't help it if so many girls want to marry me," added the young sultan, tenderly laying his sand pies in the wagon.
Daisy had ceased her cries to listen to Frankie's statement of the case; but her spirits were so depressed at once more hearing this indefinite postponement of her matrimonial prospects that she broke forth into a fresh wail of despair.
"Oh, Daisy!" said Nellie, "what shall we do with you: you're growing to be a real cry-baby."
"Yes," said Master Frankie, seeing his way at once to a peaceful solution of his difficulties. "And I shall never, never marry a cry-baby. You'd better hurry up and be good, Daisy."
At this terrible threat, Daisy's shrieks subsided into broken sobs; and Frankie, touched by the extreme desolation of her whole aspect, farther consoled her, by telling her if she would dry her eyes and be good, he would let her "make two mixes, and marry her besides." At which condescension on the part of her chosen lord and master, Daisy was in another instant beaming with smiles, and thrusting her dimpled hands into the wet sand; and the older children left her and Frankie to their play.