"
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.
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