“But my toe hurts. Something did bite it.”
“Urk! Urk!” says a familiar throaty voice beside the bed. “Urk! Urk!”
The spotted gander! It was in the room. Some one had mysteriously brought it into the house while we were asleep. And wanting to wake us up, or so it seemed, it had pecked at the first hunk of flesh that it had seen hanging out of the bed, which happened to be one of my bare feet.
Poppy got up then and lit the lamp.
“You better get up, too,” says he in a queer voice. “For there’s no telling what’s liable to happen next in this house.”
CHAPTER XV
A SCREAM IN THE NIGHT
In putting the gander in our room, was it the “ghost’s” scheme to sort of show us how helpless we were in the big spooky house? Not liking the way we were messing around in his secret affairs, and finding out things, as to-night, was he trying to scare us out?
Thoughts like these soon dried up our shivers. For we knew, all right, who the “ghost” was. Yet it puzzled us to understand how the old man could do so much “mystery” stuff without his wife catching on. She must be an awfully sound sleeper, we concluded.
As an excuse for getting old Goliath up, we told him that some one was in the house. But I don’t think he understood half what we were saying to him. He was too sleepy. Then we went into the hall, where we met Ma on her way to the kitchen with an empty hot-water bottle. She probably didn’t mind parading around in front of us boys in her nightgown, but I took it from her actions that it kind of embarrassed her to put on the show in front of old Goliath.
“Oh, dear!” she cried, glad, I guess, that we were there to listen to her further troubles. “I don’t know but what one of you boys had better run downstairs and telephone for the doctor. For I’m having the awfullest time with poor Pa. It’s that tobacco smoke. He’s sick to his stomach.”