e, "come
quick! Look at the funny bugs!"

Nan and Flossie hurried to where their little brother had dug a hole in
the earth.

"They're mice!" exclaimed Nan. "Oh, aren't they cute! Let's catch them.
Call Bert or Harry."

While Flossie ran to tell Bert, Nan watched the tiny mice so that they
would not get away.

"It's a nest of field mice," Harry told them.

"We'll put them in a cage and have them in our circus."

"But they're my mice," cried Freddie, "and I won't let anybody have
them!"

"We're only going to help you take care of them in a little box. Oh,
there's the mother--catch her, Harry," called Bert.

The mother mouse was not so easy to catch, however, and the boys had
quite a chase after her. At last she ran into a tin box the boys had
sunk in the ground when playing golf. Here Harry caught the frightened
little creature.

"I've got a queer kind of a trap," Harry said. "It's just like a cage.
We can put them in this until we build a larger one. We can make one
out of a box with a wire door."

The mice were the smallest, cutest things, not larger than Freddie's
thumb. They hardly looked like mice at all, but like some queer little
bugs. They were put in the cage trap, mother and all, and then Bert got
them a bit of cheese from the kitchen.

"What! Feed mice!" exclaimed Dinah "Sakes alive, chile! you go bringing
dem mice in de house to eat all our cake and pie. You just better drown
dem in de brook before dey bring a whole lot more mices around here."

"We'll keep them away from the house," Bert told Dinah. "We're going to
have a circus, you know, and these will be our trained mice."

Freddie, of course, was delighted with the little things, and wanted to
dig for more.

"I tell you!" said Bert. "We might catch butterflies and have them
under a big glass on the table with all the small animals."

"That would be good," Harry agreed. "We could catch some big brown ones
and some little fancy ones. Then after dark we could get some big moths
down by the postoffice electric light."

The girls, too, went catching butterflies. Nan was able to secure four
or five yellow ones in the flower garden near the porch, and Flossie
got two of the small brown variety in the nasturtium bed. Harry and
Bert searched in the close syringa bushes where the nests are usually
found.

"Oh! look at this one!" called Freddie, coming up with a great green
butterfly. "Is it bird?" he asked. "See how big it is!"

It really