"Certainly you may, and I'll tell you what, youngster," said Mr. Hodgkins, "I believe you're a pretty good boy. After you put the five pigs where they belong, you come over and have a talk with me, will you?"
"Yeth, thir," and Stubbins left the barnyard fast as he could go, except by riding a pig bareback.
In the meantime the five pigs in the attic had been playing Pussy Wants a Corner, or Tag, or some other game that kept their twenty feet continually pattering. Sally noticed them first.
"Hush, everybody," she cautioned. "I thought I heard something go trot—trot—trot right here in the house."
Sure enough. When the children stopped their merry chatter, the sound of many feet could not be mistaken.
"Stubbins is up to something," said Mrs. Mulvaney. "Go call him, Hannah."
The child obeyed, but no Stubbins responded inside or outside of the house.
"It ain't Stubbins," declared Hannah, her eyes wide with fear. "What can it be?"
Mrs. Mulvaney, Cornelia Mary, and Sally remembered the stories they had heard, stories that had kept the house empty so many years.
"It must—must be imagination," declared Cornelia Mary, whose lower teeth seemed trying to break her upper teeth.