“Aw, that’s no fun.”

“What’ll we do then?”

Bob thought a few seconds.

“I’ll tell you,” he said.  “We’ll put a tic-tac on Mrs. Mooney’s window.  She lives all alone, and she’ll think it’s a ghost rapping.”

“Good!  Come on.  Have you got some string?”

“Sure.”

So you see how poorly Bob remembered his promise of the night before, and with what thoughtlessness he again started to indulge in a prank—­a prank which might throw a nervous woman into hysterics.  Yet in this Bob was just like thousands of other boys—­he “didn’t mean anything.”  The trouble was he did not think.

So the two boys, their heads full of the project of making a tic-tac, stole quietly through the village streets toward the cottage of the Widow Mooney.

CHAPTER III

A STRANGE PROPOSITION

Perhaps some of my readers may not know what the contrivance known as a “tic-tac” is like.  Those of you who have made them, of course, do not need to be told.  If you ever put them on any person’s window, I hope you selected a house where there were only boys and girls or young people to be startled by the tic-tac.  It is no joke, though at first it may seem like one, to scare an old person with the affair.  So if any boy or girl makes a tic-tac after the description given here, I trust he or she will be careful on whom the prank is played.

To make a tic-tac a long string, a pin and a small nail are all that is required.  A short piece of string is broken from the larger piece, and to one end of this latter the pin is fastened by being thrust through a knot.

To the other end or the short cord is attached the nail.  Then the long string is tied to the short string a little distance above the nail.

With this contrivance all made ready Bob and Ted sneaked up under the front window of the widow’s house.  It was the work of but a moment for Bob to stick the point of the pin in the wooden part of the window-frame so that the nail dangled against the glass.  Then, holding the free end of the long string, he and Ted withdrew to the shadow of some lilac bushes.

“All ready?” asked Ted.

“Sure.  Here she goes!”

Bob then gently jerked the string.  This swung the nail to and fro, and it tapped on the window-pane as if some one was throwing pebbles against the glass.  This was kept up for several seconds.

The widow, who was reading in the dining-room, heard the tapping at the glass.  It startled her at first, and then, thinking some one might be at the door, she conquered her nervousness and opened the portal.  Of course she saw no one, and the string was not observed.  Neither were the boys, hidden in the bushes.

“We fooled her,” chuckled Ted, for they could see all that happened.

“Sure we did,” added Bob.  “Wait till she goes in and we’ll do it some more.”