“DON’T YOU SMELL PEPPERMINT?”
It was small and round and flat and smooth. Mary Ellen hardly felt it, and as the hand of a little baby mostly keeps itself shut very tight it did not drop out, and by and by it grew just the least bit sticky and staid fast.
To be sure, when Mama Nan was undressing her and putting on her nightgown she suddenly began to sniff. “I seem to smell peppermint,” she said, and dipped her nose down among Mary Ellen’s ruffles. Then she lifted her head and sniffed all about in the air in the funniest way. “If she were not mine,” she said, “I should certainly say somebody had been giving this child peppermint! Come here, Dick! Don’t you smell peppermint? Put your head down here!”
Papa Dick put his nose down in Mary Ellen’s ruffles and sniffed. He said it did seem as if he got a whiff of peppermint, but perhaps babies always smelt of peppermint.
“Of course she hasn’t had any,” Mama Nan said at last, and they went out and left the baby to her dreams, and the baby said nothing. The little hand staid shut, and she went to sleep.
HE FLASHED UP THE NIGHT LAMP.
That night, suddenly, just as the nursery clock began striking twelve, there was an outcry from the crib, so sharp, so painful, that it brought Mama Nan to her feet in the millionth part of a second. Papa Dick, too! He flashed up the night lamp and then there was a second scream, from Mama Nan, and she dropped in a heap by the crib. As for Papa Dick, his hair stood on end. He dashed at the crib and snatched a small mouse, a live mouse but ever so little, from Mary Ellen’s fingers that were clutching it tight. In his horror he flung it into the water-pitcher. Then he flung the water, some of it, and the mouse with it, into Mama Nan’s face, for she had fainted; and the mouse leaped from Mama Nan’s wet cheek and ran for his life.
The next minute both were bending over Mary Ellen. Her big blue eyes, full of tears, were just shutting to sleep again. A tiny pink peppermint lay on the crib quilt. Mama Nan pounced on it. “What did I tell you!” she cried.
Papa Dick was examining the warm little hand. It was very sticky and sugary. There was a tiny red spot, like a pin-prick, on one side of the palm. “The mouse was after the candy,” said he, “and she just shut her fingers on him when he bit—hurrah for our baby, Nan!”