“I wish you boys would go home,” said Katherine primly. “You’re altogether too rough for us little girls to play with. I think it’s horrid and nasty to play tricks on people when they’re asleep.” From her gently shocked and disapproving expression you never would have guessed that she was the one who had started it all.
“Come on home, fellows, we’re invited out,” said Uncle Teddy, with a pretended injured air. “It’s time we little gentlemen were in the hay—I mean the straw. Come on, Pitt, never mind looking for the tack; Mother will find it when she gets up in her stocking feet to see if she locked the door!” With which shot he retired in haste through the doorway and over to the other cabin, and just in time, for Aunt Clara sent a snowball flying after him that fell short by a bare inch.
Then she closed and barred the door, fixed the fire with hardwood which would last the rest of the night, plastered adhesive strips over the various blisters which the Winnebago feet had acquired on the long march, and tucked them all in warmly with a motherly pat and a goodnight kiss. After a twenty-mile walk in the open air a hard plank would be a comfortable resting place, and the straw filled and blanket padded bunks were far from the hard plank class. For the first time in the history of Winnebago sleeping parties there was strictly “nothing doing” after they were tucked in. Most of them fell asleep during the process of tucking.
Thus it was that when the first thump came at the door nobody stirred. A second thump followed like a blow from a battering ram. Aunt Clara sat up.
“Who’s there?” she called. No answer save a series of blows and thumps that threatened to break the door down. The rest were awake by this time, trembling in their beds.
“Theodore, is that you?” shrieked Aunt Clara above the noise. “What do you want?” Again came a shower of blows, as if somebody were trying to force their way in with an axe. This time the bars gave way and the door swung inward. There was a loud bellowing, roaring sound, which seemed to their startled ears like a deep-throated whistle, and into the cabin there walked a cow. The girls shrieked and disappeared under the bed-clothes, for to their excited fancy she looked like a wild animal.
“Shoo, get out!” shouted Aunt Clara, throwing her slipper with neat aim into the cow’s face. Bossy looked reproachfully at her and walked farther into the cabin, standing close beside the row of bunks.
Katherine raised her head from the blanket to see what was going on and looked right into the open mouth of the creature as it stood over her. “Murder! It’s going to eat me up!” she shrieked, diving under the covers with a prolonged howl.
By this time Aunt Clara had found the whistle with which she always summoned her husband when she needed him and blew a long, shrill blast. A few minutes later Uncle Teddy appeared at the door, with a string of startled boys running out of their cabin behind him, and at a word of command from him, accompanied by several emphatic pokes and proddings, Mrs. Bossy meekly turned and walked out through the doorway, which was considerably the worse for her entrance. She had probably strayed from the nearest farmhouse and was suffering from the intense cold. Attracted by the light streaming from the little window of the cabin she had come to find shelter, and when nobody answered her first gentle knocks with her horns, she had taken matters into her own hands and become housebreaker. She was stabled in a lean-to shelter for the rest of the night and made comfortable with straw and a blanket.
“Isn’t it funny how all the suffering critters come to our hospitable door for shelter?” said Katherine at the breakfast table. “Just like Sandhelo. He came of his own accord, also.”