"Gracious! what's coming up stairs?" said Lou, placing the glue brush on the chair beside the glue-pot, and stepping to the door.
"Look out for the rat!" shouted Uncle Leonard.
Amy instantly sprang on the first object at hand, her just-mended rocking-chair, which gave way, of course, and over she went. However, she broke her fall by catching at the chair holding the glue-pot and brush, though the glue rolled to the right and the brush to the left. The package of prepared chalk, that had received an upward pitch as Amy had toppled over, then came down in time to plentifully powder both her and Lou.
The latter had turned to clear the way for the rat and Cattegat, not more than an instant later than Amy had taken alarm, but the glue had been spilled more quickly. And though Lou jumped over the pool of glue safely, he landed right under the shower of chalk, and directly upon the slippery glue brush. Presto! down went Lou, and shooting over the smooth floor, vanished under the bed at the far end of the room, as though he had been a clown playing in a pantomime.
Amy, so filled with laughter, could scarce manage to climb on the sound chair before the rat and Cattegat came whizzing through the doorway; both leaped clear of the spilled glue, and scampered in a flash across the floor into the next room, and so on through several other rooms that communicated.
"Oho! bravo, Cattegat!" said Uncle Leonard, as he came on, running at a wonderful rate for him. Right through the doorway he ran, but on seeing Amy, he was about to lessen his speed, and have her join in the chase, when he stepped in the pool of glue. Slip, slip, slide across the room, went Uncle Leonard, with his feet getting farther apart, as though the floor was the slipperiest of ice. He slid to and against a wash-stand, and then sank down slowly and gracefully at its foot in a way that would have done credit to a champion gymnast. But he shook the stand so violently that the water-pitcher was shaken over within its basin, and emptied half its contents upon his head.
Amy rushed to his aid, righted the pitcher, and inquired if he was hurt.
"Not a bit," said Uncle Leonard, getting again on his feet, smiling mirthfully at his own dripping coat, and giving one of those jolly laughs of his at Amy's chalk-powdered head. "Come along, my dear," continued he; "keep the chase up, or the rat will yet have the best of it. But where's Lou?"
"Here I am!" answered Lou, poking his laughing, powdered face from under the bed, and crawling out. And away they all followed the chase, Uncle Leonard kicking off his gluey slippers, and catching up a pair of Papa Wilson's.
Cattegat and the rat in the mean time had been racing up and down the front bedrooms, frightening Mamma Wilson and Aunt Laura into climbing up on one of the beds, and Cattegat had distinguished himself by knocking over a sewing basket and a screen. As the pursuers appeared upon the scene, rat and cat ran out into the hallway again, through a door that Aunt Laura had opened, hoping to get clear of them.