the table tasted of Fels Naptha. Tabitha
looked concerned, but Billiard and Toady were so innocent appearing
that she never suspected them of having had a hand in the affair.

The next time it was Tabitha's biscuits. When they appeared on the
table they were as thin as wafers and as hard as bricks. In some way
she had substituted corn starch for baking powder; but as another
hurried visit to the pantry showed both articles where they belonged on
their respective shelves, she concluded that carelessness on her part
had caused the trouble, and let the matter drop.

Then the house began to be infested with all sorts of obnoxious insects
and reptiles. Mercedes found two huge grasshoppers in the soup one
day; a long, wriggling centipede fell out of the cook-book as Tabitha
turned its pages in search of a favorite recipe; a scorpion dropped off
the cake plate which Gloriana was in the act of passing, so frightening
the girl that she dashed cake, dish and all onto the floor, and
promptly had hysterics. Horned toads, ugly lizards, and worms of every
description made their appearance by the dozen, until even Tabitha grew
alarmed; but still she did not suspect the cause of such an invasion,
as the two brothers were apparently as docile and obedient as their
gentler cousins.

Even when they found a dead rattler coiled up in the middle of the
kitchen floor, Tabitha attributed it to Carrie's dog, General, who
still spent much of his time at the McKittrick cottage. Nor did she
notice that the reptile was coiled in a most impossible manner, with
its head propped up by two tiny wires. She merely hustled the thing
out of doors, hacked it into pieces with the axe, and buried the
remnants under a pile of rocks to make sure no harm came of them. It
never occurred to her to wonder how General, who was not allowed in the
house, could have dragged the snake inside without someone seeing or
hearing him, for he was proud of his snake-killing accomplishment and
always made a big commotion when he succeeded in trapping one. So the
culprits enjoyed the girls' scare, and retired to the water-tank behind
the assayer's office to hatch up some new scheme.

Only Gloriana, whose cordial dislike for boys, caused by her unhappy
experiences in Manchester, made her suspicious of all that species of
humanity, seemed aware of what was going on, but she could not catch
them red-handed. And knowing that she suspected them, the brothers
made life