queaking like a rat, and scratching with my
nails. Knowing by the exclamation she made that I had attracted her
attention, I tugged at the string; this lifted the bolster a little,
and of course out came my rat. I heard her scream, and open her door.
I pulled the rat up tight to the ceiling. Then the door of the
nursery, where we slept only in the winter, opened and shut, and I
concluded she had gone to bed there to avoid the rat. I could hardly
sleep for pleasure at my success.

As she waited on us at breakfast next morning, she told my father that
she had seen in her bed the biggest rat she ever saw in her life, and
had not had a wink of sleep in consequence.

"Well," said my father, "that comes of not liking cats. You should get
a pussy to take care of you."

She grumbled something and retired.

She removed her quarters to the nursery. But there it was yet easier
for me to plague her. Having observed in which bed she lay, I passed
the string with the rat at the end of it over the middle of a bar that
ran across just above her head, then took the string along the top of
the other bed, and through a little hole in the door. As soon as I
judged her safe in bed, I dropped the rat with a plump. It must have
fallen on or very near her face. I heard her give a loud cry, but
before she could reach the door, I had fastened the string to a nail
and got out of the way.

It was not so easy in those days to get a light, for the earliest form
of lucifer match was only just making its appearance in that part of
the country, and was very dear: she had to go to the kitchen, where
the fire never went out summer or winter. Afraid lest on her return
she should search the bed, find my harmless animal suspended by the
neck, and descend upon me with all the wrath generated of needless
terror, I crept into the room, got down my rat, pulled away the
string, and escaped. The next morning she said nothing about the rat,
but went to a neighbour's and brought home a fine cat. I laughed in my
sleeve, thinking how little her cat could protect her from my rat.

Once more, however, she changed her quarters, and went into a sort of
inferior spare room in the upper part of the house, which suited my
operations still better, for from my own bed I could now manage to
drop and pull up the rat, drawing it away beyond the danger of
discovery. The next night she took the cat into the room with her, and
for that one I judged it prudent to leave her al