“And what is Sara going to do with her bunny?” I asked.

“Vuv it,” she said with ecstasy.

“Shall I leave her?” asked Nannie.

“What a foolish question, Nannie!” I said.  “Could any one send away a blue dressing-be-gowned Sara?”

“And shall I take the others, miss?”

“Do,” I replied.

They went and left me in sole possession of Sara.

“Shall I tell Sara a story?” I said.  She nodded her head.

“A storlie all about bunnies.”

So I began, “Once upon a time there was a big bunny.”

“A vitty bunny,” said Sara.

“A little bunny,” I said.  “Once upon a time there was a little bunny.”

“A velly, velly vitty bunny,” said Sara.

“Once upon a time there was a very, very little bunny, “I repeated, emphasizing the very, very little,” as Sara had done.  She cuddled into the bedclothes, evidently quite satisfied with the beginning as it now stood.  “And the very, very little bunny lived in a nice hole —­”

“A nice bed,” said Sara, “a velly nice bed and not in a vitty bed, but in a velly big bed, a velly, velly big bed with Aunt Woggles.”

“In a nice big bed with Aunt Woggles,” I said, “and he was a very good little bunny.”

At this Sara rose in the bed and looked at me very severely.

" Did he say his palayers eberly day?” she asked.

“No, not prayers, darling.  Bunnies don’t say prayers; children say prayers.”

“Naughty bunnies!” said Sara with great severity.

Dreading a religious discussion, which Sara loves, I proposed changing the story to “The Three Bears.”  She acquiesced with jumps of joy up and down, just where one would not choose to be jumped upon, and said, “Ve felee belairs.”

Here I fared no better:  my version of the story was so hopelessly wrong, and I received such crushing correction at the hands of Sara, that I was glad to relinquish my office of story-teller and suggested that she should tell a story instead.

This was evidently what she had wanted to do all along, for she began at once.  She tells a story very much as she says her prayers, at the same terrific pace certainly.  First of all she swallowed and took a deep breath, then she began, “Vunce there was a vitty blush —­ and not a bad nasty blush —­ it said its palayers ebery morning an nannie said good girly an then the blush vent to sleep in a vitty bed with Yaya.”

“Go slower, darling,” I said.  “Aunt Woggles can’t quite understand.”

“Yan —­ ven —­ Yaya —­ voke up ve vitty —­ belush said, ’Good-morning,’ yan Yaya said, ‘Good-morning,’ yan it was a nice bunny yan not a nasty bunny any more.”

Here Sara’s thoughts were distracted, and the story ended abruptly for want of breath, or possibly of story.  She refused to go on, and when pressed said with great decision, “Dey’s all dead.”