“Jane, this is September the fourth, aint it?” asks Esther.

“Yes,” replies Jane.  “Go to sleep and let me alone, I don’t want to talk to you, I want to go to sleep.  What if it is September the fourth.”

“Oh nothing,” replies Esther, “only it is just a week to-night, since I went riding with Bob!  Oh, what will become of me?” and she instantly burst into another crying spell.

“Esther” said Jane, “Do you know I think you are losing your mind, and that if you keep on this way you will get so crazy that we will have to put you in the Insane Asylum.”  This had the desired effect, for she stopped instantly.  For a few minutes everything was perfectly still.  No sound was to be heard except the breathing of the two young girls, as they lay side by side in bed.

They had remained perfectly quiet, for about ten or fifteen minutes, when Esther jumped out of bed with a scream, exclaiming that there was a mouse under the bed clothes.

Her scream startled her sister, who was almost asleep, and she also got out of bed and lit the lamp, for she is as much afraid of mice as Esther is.  They both searched the bed, but could not find the supposed mouse, supposing it to be inside the mattrass.  Jane exclaimed “Oh pshaw, what fools we are to be sure to be scared at a little harmless mouse; if there really is one here it can do us no harm, for see, it is inside the mattrass, look how the straw is being moved about.  The mouse has gotten inside and can’t get out, because there is no hole in the ticking.  Let us go back to bed Esther.  It can do us no harm now.”  So they put out the light, and got into bed again.  After listening for a few minutes without hearing the straw move in the mattrass, they both fell asleep.

On the following night the girls heard something moving under their bed.  Esther exclaimed:  “There is that mouse again, Jane.  Let us get up and kill it.  I’m not going to be worried by mice every night.”

So they both arose, and on hearing a rustling in a green paste-board box, filled with patch-work, which was under the bed, they placed it out in the middle of the room and were much amazed to see the box jump up in the air about a foot and then fall over on its side.  The girls could not believe their own eyes; so Jane placed the box in its old position in the middle of the room, and both watched it intently, when to their amazement the same thing occurred again.  The girls were now really frightened, and screamed as loudly as they could for Dan, who put on some clothing and came into their room to ascertain what was the matter.  They told him what had just taken place, but he only laughed, and after pushing the box under the bed, and remarking that they must be insane or perhaps had been dreaming, he went back to bed grumbling because his rest had been disturbed.