hanging
from a nail, where you children must have left them when you last played
with them. But we couldn't see any one near them who might have rung
them, and there was no one in the attic, as far as we knew.
"Then, even as we stood there, waiting and looking about, I saw the
string of bells move, and then they jingled, and, looking down on the
floor, I saw a big rat trying to carry this apple away in his mouth."
"Oh, Daddy!" cried Rose, "how could a rat carrying an apple away in his
mouth, make the bells ring?"
"Easily enough," her father answered. "The apple was tied on a string,
as I suppose some of you children left it when you got through playing
this afternoon. And the other end of the cord was tied to the string of
bells. That was also more of your play, I suppose.
"The rat came out of his hole in the attic, smelled the apple on the
floor, and tried to drag it into his cupboard. But the string held it
fast, and as the rat pulled and tugged he made the sleigh bells jingle;
for every time he pulled the apple he pulled the string, and every time
he pulled the string he pulled the bells."
"And is that all there was?" asked Grandma Ford.
"All there was," answered Grandpa Ford. "Just a rat trying to have a
nice apple supper made the bells ring."
"Well, I'm glad I know what it was," said Mother Bunker. "If I hear a
noise in the night I like to know what it is and where it comes from.
Now I can go back to sleep."
"So can I," said Rose.
And the other little Bunkers said the same thing. As for Mun Bun and
Margy, as soon as they heard that everything was all right they
uncovered their heads and went to sleep before any one else.
"Well, well! To think what a little thing can puzzle every one," said
Grandpa Ford to Daddy Bunker, as the grown folks went back to their
rooms. "Maybe we'll find that the other noises are made just as simply
as this one was."
"Maybe," agreed Daddy Bunker. "But of late we haven't heard that
groaning noise much, and maybe we shall not again."
"I hope not," said Mother Bunker.
The grown folks did not know that, half asleep as they were even then,
Russ and Rose heard this talk. And the two older Bunker children made up
their minds to find the ghost--if there was one--or whatever sounded
like one.
The next day the children all went up to the attic and saw the string
where one of them had left it tied to the bells. Daddy Bunker had taken
off the apple.
"I wish we coul
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