“It hasn’t a long nose at all, if that’s what you mean,” declared Agnes, for she was sufficiently familiar with the housekeeper’s Scotch dialect to interpret these words.
“Aye, lassie, mebby not the noo. But e’er it’ll gang awa’——”
“Why, it’s a football!” exclaimed Luke. “A football painted white!”
“So it is,” agreed Neale, for many a blown-up pigskin he had help shove over the goal line.
“Who kicked it in here?” demanded Ruth, but, even as she asked, she began to suspect Sammy, Dot and Tess.
“’Twas nae kicket,” asserted Mrs. MacCall, who had sunk trembling into a rocking chair. “’Twas nae kicket. But ’twas rollin’ alang by its anesel’.”
And, truly, the white football—ghostly enough alone—was making its way over the floor in a strange fashion, rolling first to one side and then to the other.
“It moves like one of those Mexican beans with a bug inside,” laughed Neale.
“Well, a football was made to kick, and here goes!” cried Luke, advancing toward the pigskin.
“Don’t kick it! Don’t!” cried a voice outside the living-room door, and from the hall in sprang Sammy Pinkney, followed by the giggling Tess and Dot, the latter carrying her Alice-doll.