She began to question them. The little girls were shy, and answered to the best of their ability. But suddenly Dreamikins rested her elbows upon the table and looked at Miss Fletcher in her intense kind of way.
Miss Fletcher did not notice her look, but asked her:
"And now, Emmeline, we are coming to arithmetic. How many of us are in the room at present?"
Dreamikins slowly answered, "Five."
"Count again."
"Five," she repeated, "but you can see only four; there's you and me and Freda and Daffy and Er."
Miss Fletcher looked at her in a puzzled sort of way.
"Er is sitting close to me," Dreamikins went on; "he never takes a chair, but I feel him squeezing me. He won't want to do lessons, but he must be counted, for he's at the table with us."
Miss Fletcher looked under the table.
"Is it a dog?" she asked.