“Is he gone?” asked Eugenia, poking her head slowly out from under the bed like a cautious turtle.

“Yes, Wash has him,” answered the Little Colonel, laughing hysterically now that her temper had spent itself.  “You girls look too funny for any use.  Come down off your perch on that wardrobe, Joyce.  It was only an old pet that the boys bought from a tramp one time.  They keep it up at ‘Fairchance,’ the home that Mr. MacIntyre founded for little waifs and strays.  I s’pose that is what Malcolm meant by a travellin’ show.  I might have thought of that, for they are always makin’ it show off its tricks.”

Eliot had found her voice by this time, and was sitting limply back in her chair with her hand over her heart.  “If that is their travelling show,” she said, weakly, “I wish they’d choose another road.  I was that scared I couldn’t have spoken a word if my life had depended on it; and all the time I was trying my hardest to scream.  I thought it was a wild beast that had walked in from the woods to devour us all.”

“But, Eliot,” said the Little Colonel, still laughing, “you know we don’t have wild beasts in these woods nowadays.  There hasn’t been any for yeahs and yeahs.”

But Eliot shook her head doubtfully, and when the boys came up with a banjo and French harp to put the bear through his performances, she watched the dancing at a respectful distance.  She was not at all sure about her safety after that, as long as she was in sight of the Kentucky woods.  She could not be convinced that all sorts of ravenous beasts were not lurking in their shadows, and would not have been surprised at any time to have met a live Indian in war-paint and feathers.

Eugenia’s frenzied wail became a byword, and for many days one had only to say, “Oh, don’t eat me!” to start a peal of laughter.

CHAPTER XI.

SOME STORIES AND A POEM.

“What is the worst thing you evah did in yo’ life, Joyce?” asked the Little Colonel.  It was the first day after their recovery from the measles that the girls had been allowed to go down-stairs, and they were trying to amuse themselves in the library.  Time had dragged for the last half-hour, and Lloyd’s question was welcomed with interest.

“Um, I don’t know,” answered Joyce, half closing her eyes as she tried to remember.  “I’ve done so many bad things that I have been ashamed of afterward, that I can hardly tell which is the worst.  One of the meanest things I ever did was when I was too small to know how cruel it was.  It was so long ago that I could not talk plainly, but I remember distinctly what a stifling hot day it was.  Mamma had been packing her furs away for the summer in moth-balls.  You know how horridly those camphor things smell.  I hung over her and asked questions every time she moved.  She told me how the moth-millers lay eggs in the furs if they are not protected, and showed me an old muff that she had found in the attic, which was so badly moth-eaten that it had to be thrown away.  I watched her lay the little balls all among the furs, and then tie them up in linen bags, and pack them away in a chest.