"You see before you the girl who invented it," said Billie with a chuckle.
"Great pumpkins, another inventor!" groaned Ferd, and sent them off into a spasm of laughter.
"Oh, tell us about it, Billie," Laura entreated. "You can be the most aggravating thing!"
"Stop calling me names or I'll never tell you," threatened Billie, at which Laura looked as meek as Laura could ever look.
Thereupon Billie recounted to an interested audience the events that had led to her idea that it might be a rat that was making a joke of them all and how she had decided to put her idea to the test.
"Say, think of getting excited about a mouse!" cried Ferd incredulously, when she had finished.
"It wasn't a mouse—it was a rat," corrected Billie.
"But it might have been a mouse," Ferd protested, but Billie broke in again.
"No it mightn't," she said decidedly. "A mouse could never have made noise enough for us to hear when we were upstairs in bed."
"Right you are," said Ferd, taking off an imaginary cap to Billie. "I have to hand it to you, Billie—you're right there."