Most deplorable of all, nurse’s best bonnet had been dragged from its box and the gorgeous bunch of grapes that adorned its brim had been torn off and lay crushed and mangled on the floor.
Everything bore the mark of rapacious little teeth. Therefore nurse’s theory favored rats, and mamma shuddered at the mere thought of such dreadful little creatures being so close to her darling.
Such a thing had never before occurred in the annals of the nursery. Nurse wept over her bonnet and Sally over the ruined fruit which had been one of her chief treasures. She hated, oh, how she hated those dreadful marauding rats, who had done such damage with their sharp little teeth. Supposing that they had attacked Peter Pan and his beloved family? The thought was too terrible for words. She immediately resolved that in the future, Rough House, the beautiful Scotch collie, should sleep in the nursery, a plan that mamma entirely approved.
Never for one moment did Sally suspect Peter Pan, sitting so calmly in the bosom of his family, of being the author of the tragedy.
She had taken off his pajamas and dressed him for the day in a smart white sweater with leggings to match, and a beautiful white toboggan cap with a pink tassel that hung down at one side. To be sure, the tendency of the tassel was rather to make things topheavy on its own particular side, so that the toboggan cap was somewhat inclined to tilt rakishly over one eye.
This, however, was arranged by Sally with many a loving pat, and she gathered him affectionately in her arms, fancying that a queer expression flashed into his bright black eyes as she and the nurse discussed the feasibility of allowing Rough House to sleep in the nursery.
Nurse had been very much disturbed by the fact that she had found the night light extinguished, although the little vessel in which the wick floated was nearly half full of oil.
Rats could never have done a thing like that, she said to herself, neither could they have turned on the electric lights, nor yet scattered all the toys about the nursery floor in the grotesque confusion in which they had been found. However, she kept her ideas to herself, for the subject of ghosts and fairies was a strictly forbidden one in the nursery.