"No, I should think not," said Nellie, "but Carrie and I did not kill a mouse."
"Oh, yes! you did," said Daisy, "least you squeezed him up in the bed so he had to kill hisse'f afterwards."
"O Daisy!" said Nellie.
"It's the truf," answered Daisy, as one who knows. "Hannah found him 'most dead in your bed this morning, 'tween the mattresses, and she said you must have put him there last night, but you didn't know it, and afterwards he killed hisse'f about it. I saw him when he was dead, and going to be frowed away."
Nellie shuddered, the thought was very painful to her that the mouse should have come to his death in such a way; but Carrie felt worse still, and turning round and resting her arm upon the back of a rustic chair which stood beneath a tree, she laid her head upon it, and cried as she had done in the morning when she was hiding in the garret. Nellie comforted her as well as she could, but Carrie was hard to be consoled; and felt as if she was never to hear the last of those unlucky mice, and the consequences of her own naughtiness.
Mr. Ransom sat up late that night, long after his visitor had left, and the family gone to rest. All his little children he supposed to be long since fast asleep; and he was just preparing to turn out the lights and go upstairs himself, when a slight sound in the hall without attracted his attention. The patter of small bare feet it sounded like, and the patter of small bare feet it was, as he was assured a moment later when a little white-clad figure presented itself at the open door, and looked wistfully at him with pitiful, beseeching eyes.
"Carrie! my child! are you ill? What is wrong?" he asked in much surprise.
"No, papa, not ill, but,—but"—Tears choked her voice, the little feet ran over the floor, and she had clambered upon his knee, and with her face hidden in his bosom sobbed out her confession.
"I've been awake so long, papa," she said, "and I thought I never could go to sleep till I had told you, and I could not wait till morning, so I came out of my bed down here to find you. Oh! please forgive me, and do you think mamma can ever forgive me for being so cruel to her, and trying to think it was all nonsense about her being so afraid of mice? And then to think that poor little mouse was killed just for me! Nellie and I never knew he was there when we turned the bed over, but he wouldn't have been in our room if I had not brought the mice upstairs; and now Ruth says she don't know when we'll be rid of them, and mamma will be troubled and frightened with them for ever so long. And Nellie and Daisy have been real helps to mamma, and I talked so much about helping her too, but I've only been a bother and trouble to her, and never did a thing for her after all."