“Of what?” then they all asked me.
“That he’d stolen the eggs of,” says Dorry.
“O yes!” says Old Wonder Boy. “It’s easy enough to laugh, in the light
here, but I guess you’d ’a’ been scared, seeing something chasing you in
the dark, and going up and down, and going tick, tick, tick, every time
it touched ground, and sometimes it touched my side too.”
“For goodness gracious!” says Dorry. “Can’t you tell what it seemed most
like?”
“I tell you it didn’t seem most like anything. It didn’t run, nor walk,
nor fly, nor creep, nor glide along. And when I got to the Great
Elm-Tree, I cut round that tree, and ran this way, and that did too.”
“Where is it now?” Dorry asked him.
“O, don’t!” says W. B. “Don’t open the door. ’T is out there.”
“Come, fellers,” Dorry said, “let’s go find it.”
Benjie said, “Let’s take something to hit it with!” And he took an
umbrella and I took the bootjack, and Bubby Short took the towel horse,
and Mr. Augustus took a hair-brush, and Dorry took his boot with his arm
run down in it, and first we opened the door a crack and didn’t go out,
but peeped out, but didn’t see anything there. Then we went out a
little ways, and then we didn’t see anything. And pretty soon, going
along towards the stairs, Bubby Short stepped on something. “What’s
that?” says he. And he jumped, and we all flung our things at it. “Hold
the light!” Dorry cried out.
[Illustration]
Then W. B. brought out the light, and there wasn’t anything there but a
carpenter’s reel, with a chalk line wound up on it, and they picked it
up and began to wind up, and when they came to the end of it--where do
you s’pose the other end was? In W. B.’s pocket! and his ball and some
more things held it fast there, and that chalk-line reel was what went
bobbing up and down behind Old Wonder Boy every step he took,--bob, bob,
bobbing up and down, for there was a hitch in the line and it couldn’t
unwind any more, and the line under the door was why ’t wouldn’t latch,
and O, but you ought to ’ve heard the fellers how they roared! and Bubby
Short rolled over on the floor, and Dorry he tumbled heels over head on
all the beds, and we all shouted and hurrahed so the other fellers came
running to see what was up, and then the teachers came to see who was
flinging things round so up here, and to see what was the matter, but
there couldn’t anybody tell what the matter was for laughing, and W. B.
he looked so sheepish! O, if it wasn’t gay! How do you like this story?
That part where it touched his side was when that reel caught on
something and so jerked the string some. Now I must study my lesson.
Your affectionate brother,