"Nice, ordinary boys," she said to Mrs. Willis at the first opportunity. "Not a bit stiff or shy. did you notice, and yet not any of these smart Alecs that can't stop talking long enough to listen to what a body has to say."
"What are you locking up all the windows for, Winnie?" Sarah questioned her, sitting down on the rug to take off her sandals as a preparation for the trip upstairs. "You'll have to open them all in the morning again."
"Well, maybe I will," admitted Winnie, turning the key in the front door and sliding both bolts with emphasis, "but I won't come downstairs and find the parlor full of skunks and owls and bats—we'll be saved that."
"They couldn't get through the screens," protested Sarah, whose natural tendency to argue was intensified by weariness.
"You never can tell," was Winnie's answer to this. "I'm not taking any chances in the country."
She thought Sarah had gone up to bed and was startled a few minutes later, when busy in the kitchen, to hear the door open behind her.
"What are you doing, Winnie?" demanded Sarah, her dark eyes instantly coming to rest on the table where, spread out in imposing array, were three mousetraps and the cheese with which Winnie intended to bait them.
"If you must know," said Winnie, exasperated, "I'm setting mousetraps."
"Oh!" Sarah gulped. "Oh, Winnie—the poor little mice!"
"Now, Sarah, don't begin all that," Winnie pleaded. "I'm dead tired and I haven't the heart to start a debate with you. I'll say one thing and then I'm through; I don't intend and nothing shall induce me, to have a lot of nasty little mice tramping over my pantry shelves."