"What! Feed mice!" exclaimed Dinah "Sakes alive, chile! you go bringing dem mice in de house to eat all our cake and pie. You just better drown dem in de brook before dey bring a whole lot more mices around here."
"We'll keep them away from the house," Bert told Dinah. "We're going to have a circus, you know, and these will be our trained mice."
Freddie, of course, was delighted with the little things, and wanted to dig for more.
"I tell you!" said Bert. "We might catch butterflies and have them under a big glass on the table with all the small animals."
"That would be good," Harry agreed. "We could catch some big brown ones and some little fancy ones. Then after dark we could get some big moths down by the postoffice electric light."
The girls, too, went catching butterflies. Nan was able to secure four or five yellow ones in the flower garden near the porch, and Flossie got two of the small brown variety in the nasturtium bed. Harry and Bert searched in the close syringa bushes where the nests are usually found.
"Oh! look at this one!" called Freddie, coming up with a great green butterfly. "Is it bird?" he asked. "See how big it is!"
It really was very large, and had such beautiful wings it might easily be mistaken for some strange bird.
"We will try to keep them alive," said Harry, "and perhaps we can get ma's big glass globe to put them in. She has one she used to put wax flowers under."
"And, oh say!" exclaimed Bert, "couldn't we have an aquarium with snakes and turtles and toads in?"