dget. I didn't know what had startled her, and she did not know
that I had any connection with it, for I stood looking on as innocent as
a lamb, with my thumb in my mouth.
"When Bridget came and saw the pillow-case squirming and bumping around,
she said, 'Shure, ma'am, an' it's bewitched them furs is, and I'd not be
afther touching 'em wid a tin-fut pole. I'll run call the gard'ner next
dure.' So she put her head out at the attic window and screamed for
Dennis, and Dennis thought the house was on fire, and came running up
the stairs two steps at a time. He untied the pillow-case and turned it
upside down with a hard shake, and, of course, out bounced poor old Muff
in a shower of moth-balls, nearly smothered from being shut up so long
with that stifling odour. She was sick all day, and Bridget said that it
was a lucky thing that cats have nine lives, or she couldn't have gotten
over it.
"I cried because they had let her out, and said I didn't want the nasty
moths to spoil my kitty's fur, and mamma laughed so hard that she sat
right down on the attic floor. Then she took me in her lap and explained
how Muff took care of her own fur, and did not need to be packed away in
the summer-time."
"That makes me think of a scrape that Lloyd and I got into," said
Eugenia, "when she lived in New York. We had seen a mattress sent away
from the house to be renovated, and had asked the nurse all sorts of
questions about it. We concluded it would be a fine thing to renovate
the mattress of one of our doll-beds. So we ripped one end open and
pulled out all the cotton and excelsior it was stuffed with, and burned
it in the nursery grate. Then we began to look around the house for
something to refill it with.
"Down in the library was a beautiful fur rug. I don't remember what kind
of a wild beast it was made from; I was so little, then, you know. But
papa was very proud of it, for he had killed the animal himself out in
the Rocky Mountains, and had had the skin made into a rug as a souvenir
of that hunting trip. It had the head left on it, and we were a little
afraid of that head. The glass eyes glared so savagely, and the teeth
were so sharp in its open jaws! But the fur was long and soft and thick,
and we decided to shear off a little to stuff our mattress with. We
thought it wouldn't take much. So I took the nurse's scissors, and we
slipped down into the library with the empty mattress-tick.
"The beast's eyes seemed to look at
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