The boys retired to their room early that night where they worked most industriously with scissors and penknife and clothes brush. They had paid a hurried visit to Chicken Little’s room when they first came upstairs. This visit did much to sweeten their hour of labor.
177The girls were spending the evening at Frank’s. They were late in getting home. The night was hot and they hated to go to bed until it began to cool off. Dr. and Mrs. Morton were sitting on the front porch.
“Go to bed, children. Father was just starting over to call you.” Mrs. Morton kissed them each goodnight.
Dr. and Mrs. Morton followed them in and had barely settled themselves for the night, when an unearthly shriek rent the air, followed by another and yet another.
“What in thunder are those children up to now?” Dr. Morton spoke in the tone of one who considered that patience had ceased to be a virtue.
“O Mother, come quick–there’s snakes or frogs or something in our bed and we haven’t any light!”
Mrs. Morton hurriedly lit a lamp and went to the rescue, followed by the doctor armed with a stick.
Holding the lamp aloft they went into the room, the three girls, who had retired in a panic to the head of the stairs, bringing up the rear. Katy had scrambled into bed and out again in haste, dragging the coverlet and sheet half off on the floor. The interior of the bed was fully exposed to view. It was already occupied–not by snakes, but by a handful of fat, squirming, little polliwogs.
“Ugh, I thought it was a snake–they were so 178slimy and cold!” Katy shivered at the recollection.
Dr. Morton grimly gathered up the polliwogs, then, leaving his wife to restore order, went into the boys’ room and held a conversation behind closed doors. No report of what was said ever reached the girls, but the practical jokes ended then and there.