“I might be able to get my big toe into them,” he said. “Like Cinderella’s step-sisters and the little glass slipper.”
“These aren’t any Cinderella’s,” laughed Billie.
How nice these boys and girls did seem to her and how fine it was to be with them, even in this strange and dangerous situation!
Charlie could wear the slippers, however, although they were somewhat narrow in the toe, and presently he was fully dressed in a girl’s suit, with his face almost concealed by a long gray chiffon veil, twisted around Billie’s gray felt hat, trimmed with one red wing.
“Hurry, they’re really coming,” called Billie, catching the familiar sound of a motor engine in the distance.
“All right,” said Ben, who had been hovering around Charlie in pretended admiration of his changed appearance. “Good luck, old boy!” he added as he hastened after the girls up the narrow flight of stairs into the attic, which was perfectly dark and seemed a better place for hiding than outside, where enough twilight still lingered to make objects plainly visible.
“We are a good deal like ‘The Musicians of Bremen,’” observed Mary, in a low voice, as they lay stretched face downward on the attic floor. “Don’t you remember that old fairy tale of Grimm’s; when the robber came back to the house in the wood he was bitten and kicked and scratched and pecked by the dog and the donkey and the cat and the rooster, and then they set up such a braying and barking and crowing and meowing that he ran away scared to death?”
“If anything did happen, we might try the howling part,” said Billie. “I should think a piercing shriek from a place like this would scare a brave man——”
“Sh-h, they’re almost here,” cautioned Ben. “Don’t move, any one. The floor will creak.”
“I’m going to sneeze,” hissed Nancy, in the dark.