“I’m not sure, dear. Wait here a minute and I’ll see,” and her father went into the next room, closing the door a little after him.
Mary and her brothers stood looking at each other. What was going to happen?
“It’s to be a surprise, I s’pose,” said Artie.
“It’s the guesses, I say,” said Leigh.
“It’s a birfday present for me. Papa said so,” said Mary.
“We’re speaking like the three bears,” said Artie laughing. “Let’s go on doing it. It’s rather fun. You say something, Leigh—say ‘somebody’s been in my bed’—that’ll do quite well. Say it very growlily.”
“Somebody’s been in my bed,” said Leigh, as growlily as he could. Leigh was a very good-natured boy, you see.
“Now, it’s my turn,” said Artie, and he tried to make his voice into a kind of gruff squeak that he thought would do for the mamma bear’s talking. “Somebody’s been in my bed,” he said. “Come along, Mary, it’s you now.”
Mary was laughing by this time.
“Somebody,” she began in a queer little peepy tone, “somebody’s—” but suddenly a voice from the other side of the door made them all jump.