THE GREEN MOUSE
Showing the Value of a Helping Hand When It Is White and Slender
This time he went leisurely to the door and opened it; a girl stood there, saying, "I beg your pardon for disturbing you--" It was high time she admitted it, for her eyes had been disturbing him day and night since the first time he passed her in the hall.
She appeared to be a trifle frightened, too, and, scarcely waiting for his invitation, she stepped inside with a hurried glance behind her, and walked to the center of the room holding her skirts carefully as though stepping through wet grass.
"I--I am annoyed," she said in a voice not perfectly under command. "If you please, would you tell me whether there is such a thing as a pea-green mouse?"
Then he did a mean thing; he could have cleared up that matter with a word, a smile, and--he didn't.
"A green mouse?" he repeated gently, almost pitifully.
She nodded, then paled; he drew a big chair toward her, for her knees trembled a little; and she sat down with an appealing glance that ought to have made him ashamed of himself.
"What has frightened you?" inquired that meanest of men.
"I was in my studio--and I must first explain to you that for weeks and weeks I--I have imagined I heard sounds--" She looked carefully around her; nothing animate was visible. "Sounds," she repeated, swallowing a little lump in her white throat, "like the faint squealing and squeaking and sniffing and scratching of--of live things. I asked the janitor, and he said the house was not very well built and that the beams and wainscoting were shrinking."