"Bless me!" exclaimed the old lady, as the children rushed in and laid the musk-rat at her feet.
"Bless me! Open that window, Amy dear. I never can breathe with a creetur like that in the house. Take it right out, dears."
"But we want you to look at it, Grandma. Bertie caught it."
"In the trap," added Flora.
She patted Bertie on the head, and said he was a dear boy, but she should stifle if they did not carry the creetur out. So to please Grandma they carried it out and laid it on the door-stone. She could look at it from the open window with a handkerchief at her nose.
"Ain't it a stunner?" said Charley.
"It is a proper large one," said Grandma. "It makes me think of your father, Amy, dear, when he was a boy. He was always fetching home some sort of a creetur. La! how natural it does seem. I remember once he took to killing black cats. He fetched home as many as twenty altogether, and their skins, stretched out to dry on the side of the barn, stared me in the face every time I went into the yard. How this creetur does carry a body back, to be sure."
"This fellow wears a pretty jacket," said Charley. "I wish we knew the easiest way of getting it off. Do you know, Grandma?"
"La, child, I never was no hand for such doings."
"What a question," said Amy. "Of course Grandma does not know."