er room.

"What's up to-night?" asked Lowboy. "Oh, I see, upstairs."

"If you make bad jokes, you can't come with us," Hortense warned him.

Lowboy promised to be good, and Hortense brought out the cookies and
divided them into four piles of thirteen each.

"I know," said Lowboy, "we'll pretend that this is a midnight spread in
boarding school. Jeremiah and Grater will be teachers who try to catch
us and----"

"All you have to do is to eat your thirteen cookies," said Hortense,
"all but a little piece of the last one which you must save and put in
your pocket."

"After twelve to begin with, I can do that," joked Lowboy.

"If it kills me," said Highboy, "tell them I died a pleasant death."

Then nobody said a word for a while, and all ate their cookies. At the
tenth, Highboy remarked that thirteen would be all he would want.

"I'll break my top off or lose a handle," said he, "but it's a nice
game."

"What's happening to me?" asked Lowboy, after taking a bite of his
thirteenth.

"Don't eat any more," Hortense warned him.

"How could I?" asked Lowboy. "I'm not a storeroom or a wardrobe trunk!
Besides, your Grandmother has me half filled with her knitting and
things. I must say I prefer cookies."

"I wish," said Highboy to Hortense, "that you hadn't packed away that
last dress in my bottom drawer."

"Don't you see that you've grown small?" Hortense asked.

"Too small for the cookies," said Lowboy. "My clothes are so tight that
I can't squeeze this last piece into my pocket."

"Now we're ready for the next part of the game," said Hortense, getting
up.

"No running or anything like that," said Lowboy. "I can't do it."

"You'll only have to walk a short way, and after that it will be easy."

But Hortense had forgotten that to people as small as they had become,
it was a long walk down the hall, and the stairs, and through the
house.

"We should have eaten the cookies outside, of course," said she. "I
didn't think."

However, following Hortense as leader, they finally reached the barn.
Hortense stopped at the door.

"How will we ever get onto their backs?" said she. "Of course, we
should have climbed on first and then eaten the cookies. I'm managing
this very badly. Perhaps," she added hopefully, "they'll be lying
down."

As luck would have it, Tom and Jerry were lying down in their stalls,
for they were still weary from their adventure of the night before.
Small as they were, Hortense and Highbo