"I think Tom and Jerry are way up on the mountain side by that big rock," said she pointing.
Grandfather and Uncle Jonah could see nothing, but Fergus, whose eyes were good, said finally, "I see something moving there, to be sure, but how Tom and Jerry could reach such a place, I can't see. However, I'll go look."
Uncle Jonah shook his head and went away muttering; Hortense, holding her Grandfather's hand, went with him to his library. Grandfather took her on his knee and for a while said nothing—just sat with wrinkled brows, thinking. Then he raised his eyes to the bronze Buddha and spoke, half to himself.
"I believe if we could make the image talk we'd learn what's at the bottom of all these mysterious happenings. He looks as if he could talk, doesn't he? Perhaps if we burned incense before him he might speak."
"What is incense?" Hortense asked.
"This," said Grandfather, opening a drawer and showing her a sweet-smelling powder. "If we burned this before him and he were pleased with us, he might be made to talk. So the Hindoos believe. But I'm afraid he'd pay no attention to unbelievers."
Grandfather was joking, of course, but nevertheless Hortense pondered his words and made note of the drawer in which her Grandfather kept the little packet of incense.
Late that afternoon Fergus arrived home with Tom and Jerry, having had an awfully hard time getting them safely down the mountain side. It was so late that Fergus had no time to see to the drawers which refused to open in the lowboy and the highboy. For this Hortense was glad; she feared that it would hurt Highboy and Lowboy to have the drawers forced open and, besides, she meant that night to do her best to rescue them from the Little People. To that end she ran to the hedge which divided her yard from Andy's and, calling to Andy, told him her purpose.
