wful thing happened.

"It happened at night, the worst time, of course, for terrible things,
and they generally seem to come then. It was such a pleasant evening
that my little girl thought it would be well for me to stay in my house
outside, instead of having me in the big house, which she thought I did
not care for, and that was true, though I can see now that the big house
would have been safer at such a time.

"So I stayed in my little house out on the terrace, and thought how
pleasant it was out there, and nibbled some nice carrot tops she had put
in for me, and watched the lights commence to go out in the big house,
and saw my little girl come to the window and look out at me, and then
her light went out, too, and pretty soon I suppose I must have gone to
sleep."

FOOTNOTES:

[7] "Mr. Dog at the Circus," in _The Hollow Tree Snowed-In Book_.

II

MISS MYRTLE MEADOWS CONTINUES
HER ADVENTURES

"Really, I don't know what time it was that I woke up, but I know I did
not wake up naturally. I just seemed to jump out of my sleep, and I was
wide awake in a second. Something was clawing and scratching at one of
my wire windows, and then I saw two big, fiery eyes, and knew it was
some fierce creature, and that it was after me. Well, I thought I had
been scared before in my short life, but I could see now that I had
never really known what it was to be scared. I didn't see how I could
live from one minute to the next, I was in such a state, and I couldn't
move hand or foot.

"I knew what it was after me. Our Mr. Man had a big old Mr. Dog that I
had seen looking at me very interestedly once before when my little girl
carried my house past him. They kept him fastened with a chain, but
somehow he had worked himself loose, and now he had come to make a late
supper out of poor defenseless me. I would have talked to him, and tried
to shame him out of it, but I was too scared even to speak, for he was
biting and clawing at that wire net window as hard as he could, and I
could see that it was never going to keep him out, for it was beginning
to give way, and all of a sudden it did give way, and his big old head
came smashing right through into my house, and I expected in another
second to be dead.

"But just in that very second I seemed to come to life. I didn't have
anything to do with it at all. My legs suddenly turned into springs and
sent me flying out under old Mr. Dog's neck, between his fore feet; then
the