[Illustration]

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER I

AUNT JANE’S OLD TOYS

It was beginning to get dark in the big nursery.  Outside the wind howled and the rain beat steadily against the window-pane.  Rudolf and Ann sat as close to the fire as they could get, waiting for Betsy to bring the lamp.  Peter had built himself a comfortable den beneath the table and was having a quiet game of Bears with Mittens, the cat, for his cub—­quiet, that is, except for an angry mew now and then from Mittens, who had not enjoyed an easy moment since the arrival of the three children that morning.

“Rudolf,” Ann was saying, as she looked uneasily over her shoulder, “I almost wish we hadn’t come to stay at Aunt Jane’s alone without mother.  I don’t believe I like this room, it’s so big and creepy.  I don’t want to go to bed.  Especially”—­she added, turning about and pointing into the shadows behind her—­“especially I don’t want to go to bed in that!”

The big bed in Aunt Jane’s old nursery was the biggest and queerest the children had ever seen.  It was the very opposite of the little white enameled beds they were used to sleeping in at their apartment in New York, being a great old-fashioned four-poster with a canopy almost touching the ceiling.  It was hung with faded chintz, and instead of a mattress it had a billowy feather bed over which were tucked grandmother’s hand-spun sheets and blankets covered by the gayest of quilts in an elaborate pattern of sprigged and spotted calico patches.  The two front posts of the bed were of dark shiny wood carved in a strange design of twisted leaves and branches, and to Ann, as she looked at them by the leaping flickering firelight, it seemed as if from between these leaves and branches odd little faces peered and winked at her, vanished, and came again and yet again.

“Bother!” exclaimed Rudolf so loud that his little sister started.  “It’s just a bed, that’s all.  It’ll be jolly fun getting into it.  I believe I’ll ask if I can’t sleep there, too, instead of in the cot.  I wanted to take a running jump at it when we first came this morning, but Aunt Jane wouldn’t let me with my boots on.  She said she made that quilt herself, when she was a little girl.  We’ll all climb in together to-night as soon as Betsy goes, and have a game of something—­I dare say we’ll feel just like raisins in a pudding!”

“All the same,” said Ann, “I don’t think I like it, Rudolf.  I wish Betsy would bring the lamp!”

It was almost dark now, and they could not see, but only hear, Peter as he came shuffling out of his den, dragging his unhappy cub, and prowled around the darkest corners of the room.  Being a bear, he was not at all afraid, but made himself very happy for a while with pouncing and growling, searching for honey, and eating imaginary travelers.  Then the cub escaped, and Peter tired of his game.  Rudolf and Ann heard him tugging at the door of an old-fashioned cupboard in a far corner of the room, and presently he came over to the fire, carrying a wooden box in his arms.