"I should have offered a dollar and no more," said Tootsie to herself. "If this keeps up I'll be broke in a week."
So distressing was this outlook, that her mind refused to be diverted, and after a brief hesitation she returned to the house, intent on a more satisfactory financial arrangement. Now Tootsie was as fond of mystery stories as Skippy himself, and so with due regard to etiquette she dodged down the hedge, slunk behind the lilacs, and noiselessly let herself into the dining-room window. Then, cautiously, on hands and knees, she approached the mysteries of the dining-room table, behind the red cloth of which Skippy was to be waiting.
"Hist! It's me," she said in a wary whisper. Then, having consumed ten minutes in moving six feet serpent fashion across the creaky floor, she gained the table. Skippy was not there. She rose violently, bumping her head, scrambled out and rushed into the parlor. The phonograph likewise had disappeared.
"He's on the trail at last," she thought excitedly. "Hurray!"
But at that precise moment the strangest of strange, uncanny sounds was heard. Tootsie stood stock still and listened with a pumping heart. There was no question about it, the phonograph was gone, yet faintly, like a sinking moan, she heard, she was sure she heard, the thin, tinny sounds of a Sousa two-step. The room was dim, the house deserted. For one brief moment she stood panic-stricken, poised for flight. Then she shook her head angrily.
The partner of his arms, escaping, rolled over towards Tootsie. Page 182
"Fiddlesticks, phonographs don't have ghosts!"
And listening more intently, she gradually located the familiar strains as coming from the distant carriage house. In a fever of expectancy Tootsie flew across the lawns and gained the open door. Above her the phonograph was pumping out the thrilling measures of the latest two-step, but what puzzled her immediately were the scuffling, shifting sounds, like a scurry of rats, which accompanied it. Then a suspicion of the truth came to her and she tiptoed up the stairs. On the open floor Skippy with his arms about a strange shape was painfully treading in and out of a maze which, with a bench, a barrel and two chairs, he had arranged to visualize the perils of the ballroom.
"Thief!"