's so big and creepy. I
don't want to go to bed. Especially"--she added, turning about and
pointing into the shadows behind her--"especially I don't want to go
to bed in that!"

The big bed in Aunt Jane's old nursery was the biggest and queerest
the children had ever seen. It was the very opposite of the little
white enameled beds they were used to sleeping in at their apartment
in New York, being a great old-fashioned four-poster with a canopy
almost touching the ceiling. It was hung with faded chintz, and
instead of a mattress it had a billowy feather bed over which were
tucked grandmother's hand-spun sheets and blankets covered by the
gayest of quilts in an elaborate pattern of sprigged and spotted
calico patches. The two front posts of the bed were of dark shiny
wood carved in a strange design of twisted leaves and branches, and to
Ann, as she looked at them by the leaping flickering firelight, it
seemed as if from between these leaves and branches odd little faces
peered and winked at her, vanished, and came again and yet again.

"Bother!" exclaimed Rudolf so loud that his little sister started.
"It's just a bed, that's all. It'll be jolly fun getting into it. I
believe I'll ask if I can't sleep there, too, instead of in the cot. I
wanted to take a running jump at it when we first came this morning,
but Aunt Jane wouldn't let me with my boots on. She said she made that
quilt herself, when she was a little girl. We'll all climb in together
to-night as soon as Betsy goes, and have a game of something--I dare
say we'll feel just like raisins in a pudding!"

"All the same," said Ann, "I don't think I like it, Rudolf. I wish
Betsy would bring the lamp!"

It was almost dark now, and they could not see, but only hear, Peter
as he came shuffling out of his den, dragging his unhappy cub, and
prowled around the darkest corners of the room. Being a bear, he was
not at all afraid, but made himself very happy for a while with
pouncing and growling, searching for honey, and eating imaginary
travelers. Then the cub escaped, and Peter tired of his game. Rudolf
and Ann heard him tugging at the door of an old-fashioned cupboard in
a far corner of the room, and presently he came over to the fire,
carrying a wooden box in his arms.

"Oh, Peter, you naughty boy!" cried Ann. "You've been at the cupboard,
and Aunt Jane said expressly we were not to take anything out of it!"

"You are just like Bluebeard's wife," began Rudolf, but