Page 55 - Among the camps, or, Young people's stories of the war

One day Evelyn was sitting on the Boor in her mother’s
chamber sewing a little blue bag., which she said was her
work-bag, when a tiny mouse ran, like a little gray shadow,

across the hearth. Kittykin was at the moment busily en-
gaged in roiling about a ball of yam almost as white as her­
self, and the first thing Evelyn knew she gave a jump Jike a
trap-ball, and slid up the side of the bureau like a little shaft
of light, where she stood with all four feet close together, her

small back roached up in an arch, her tail all fuzzed up over
it, and her mouth wide open and spitting like a little demon.
She looked so funny that Evelyn dropped her sewing, and
the mouse, frightened half out of its little wits, took advan­
tage of her consternation to make a rush back to its hole

under the wainscoting, into which it dived like a. little duck.
After holding her lofty position for some time, Kittykin let
her hairs fall and lowered her back, but every now and then
she would raise them again at the bare thought of the awful
animal which had so terrified her. A t length she decided

that she miijht g;o down ; but how was she to do it? Smooth
r>
&
though the mahogany was, she had, under excitement, gone
up like a streak of lightning ; but now when she was cooJ she
was afraid to jump down. It was so high that it made her
head swim ; so, after walking timidly around and peeping

over at the floor, she began to cry for some one to take her
down, just as Evelyn would have done under the same
circumstances.
Evelyn tried to coax her down, but she would not come ;