I explained that Mike would not come upstairs again, so I was permitted to depart after securing the window.

Again I settled myself with book and cigar; there was at least for me the extra enjoyment that comes from the sense of pleasure earned by honest toil.  Pretty soon Budge entered the room.  I affected not to notice him, but he was not in the least abashed by my neglect.

“Uncle Harry,” said he, throwing himself in my lap between my book and me, “I don’t feel a bit nice.”

“What’s the matter, old fellow?” I asked.  Until he spoke I could have boxed his ears with great satisfaction to myself; but there is so much genuine feeling in whatever Budge says that he commands respect.

“Oh, I’m tired of playin’ with Toddie, an’ I feel lonesome.  Won’t you tell me a story?”

“Then what’ll poor Toddie do, Budge?”

“Oh, he won’t mind—­he’s got a dead mouse to be Jonah now, so I don’t have no fun at all.  Won’t you tell me a story?”

“Which one?”

“Tell me one that I never heard before at all.”

“Well, let’s see; I guess I’ll tell—­”

“Ah—­ah—­ah—­ah—­ee—­ee—­ee,” sounded afar off, but fatefully.  It came nearer—­it came down the stairway and into the library, accompanied by Toddie, who, on spying me, dropped his inarticulate utterance, held up both hands, and exclaimed:—­

“Djonah bwoke he tay-al!”

True enough; in one hand Toddie held the body of a mouse, and in the other that animal’s caudal appendage; there was also perceptible, though not by the sense of sight, an objectionable odor in the room.

“Toddie,” said I, “go throw Jonah into the chicken-coop, and I’ll give you some candy.”

“Me too,” shouted Budge, “cos I found the mouse for him.”

I made both boys happy with candy, exacted a pledge not to go out in the rain, and then, turning them loose on the piazza, returned to my book.  I had read perhaps half-a-dozen pages when there arose and swelled rapidly in volume a scream from Toddie.  Madly determined to put both boys into chairs, tie them and clap adhesive plaster over their mouths, I rushed out upon the piazza.

“Budgie tried to eat my candy,” complained Toddie.

“I didn’t,” said Budge.

“What did you do?” I demanded.

“I didn’t bite it at all—­I only wanted to see how it would feel between my teeth—­that’s all.”

I felt the corners of my mouth breaking down, and hurried back to the library, where I spent a quiet quarter of an hour in pondering over the demoralizing influence exerted upon principle by a sense of the ludicrous.  For some time afterward the boys got along without doing anything worse than make a dreadful noise, which caused me to resolve to find some method of deadening piazza-floors if I ever owned a house in the country.  In the occasional intervals of comparative quiet I caught snatches of very funny conversation.  The boys had coined a great many words whose meaning was evident enough but I wonder greatly why Tom and Helen had never taught them the proper substitutes.