through
at all.

Once in the manger, it was only a moment before they were out from
under the velvety noses of the horses and had slipped past them through
the stall. They ran out of the barn and to the kitchen where they
secured an unusually large supply of cookies; then hurried to the nook
in the shrubbery beside the basement window that led to the furnace, a
good place to hide.

They ate cooky for cooky until they had eaten ten apiece, when they
stopped to rest a bit. Hortense was still warm and unbuttoned her
collar. As she did so, she was conscious of missing something and felt
again carefully.

"I've lost my charm," she said hurriedly.

"Perhaps it slipped down inside," Andy suggested.

Hortense felt of herself but could not find it.

"I must have lost it going down the hay chute," she said. "I know I had
it in the haymow. It must have come off when I squeezed through. Dear
me, if I should lose it!"

"We'll find it when Uncle Jonah goes away from the barn," Andy consoled
her.

They attacked the remaining cookies.

"I wonder how many cookies I could eat," said Andy dreamily as they
began their thirteenth.

"I've had most enough," said Hortense taking another bite.

Then she began to feel very strange. Everything about her seemed to
grow larger and larger, except Andy. The entrance to the basement
seemed as wide as the barn door; the lilac bush over her head looked as
big as an oak tree, and the piece of cooky in her hand as big as a
dinner plate.

"What's happened to us?" Andy asked.

"I believe," said Hortense, "that we've grown small, or everything else
big. I don't know which."

"How'll we ever grow big again?" Andy asked.

"We won't worry about that now," said Hortense practically. "It'll be
lots of fun to be small. We can hide so nobody can find us and surprise
people. I believe I could climb right into one of Highboy's drawers, or
even into the jar where Grandpa keeps his tobacco."

"Mother'll never be able to find me when she wants me to weed the
garden," said Andy hopefully.

Hortense's eyes grew wide, and she looked at Andy with a great idea in
her eyes.

"What is it?" Andy asked.

"Now we can go through the little door and down the shining tunnel!"
said Hortense.

It was so bright an idea that they wondered they hadn't thought of it
sooner.

"But we're so small, how'll we ever get to the bottom of the chute?
It'll be twice as high as we are."

Hortense hadn't thought of t