"What's the matter?" asked the girls, rushing into the pantry.
"Spiders and mice," said Mabel. "I just poked my head into the cupboard and a mouse jumped out. I'm all spider-webby again, too."
"Well, there won't be any spiders by tomorrow night," said Bettie, consolingly, "or any mice either, if somebody will bring a cat. Now let's go home to supper—I'm hungry as a bear."
"Everybody remember to wear her oldest clothes," admonished Jean, "and to bring a broom."
"I'll tie the key to a string and wear it around my neck night and day," said Bettie, locking the door carefully when the girls were outside. "Aren't we going to have a perfectly glorious summer?"
When Mr. Black, on the way to his office the next morning, met his four little friends, he did not recognize them. Jean, who was fourteen, and tall for her age, wore one of her mother's calico wrappers tied in at the waist by the strings of the cook's biggest apron. Marjory, in the much shrunken gown of a previous summer, had her golden curls tucked away under the housemaid's sweeping cap. Bettie appeared in her very oldest skirt surmounted by an exceedingly ragged jacket and cap discarded by one of her brothers; while Mabel, with her usual enthusiasm, looked like a veritable rag-bag. When Bettie had unlocked the door—she had slept all night with the key in her hand to make certain that it would not escape—the girls filed in.
"I know how to handle a broom as well as anybody," said Mabel, giving a mighty sweep and raising such a cloud of dust that the four housecleaners were obliged to flee out of doors to keep from strangling.
"Phew!" said Jean, when she had stopped coughing. "I guess we'll have to take it out with a shovel. The dust must be an inch thick."
"Wait," cried Marjory, darting off, "I'll get Aunty's sprinkling can; then the stuff won't fly so."
After that the sweeping certainly went better. Then came the dusting.