Page:I Know a Secret (1927).pdf/37

 Bunny made her morning report. Fourchette and Fritz, who were too confirmed enemies to be really friendly, could not pretend any pleasure in their meetings, but they ignored each other with careful politeness. If Fritz ever caught Fourchette's eye he looked quickly in another direction. Fourchette did not forget that Fritz had once killed one of her cousins, and Fritz remembered the scratch she had given him across the tenderest part of his nose. But for the time all were on their best behaviour. Even the chipmunks who live in the wall of Mr. Mistletoe's study, behind the bookshelves, ventured out to join the meetings. Mr. Mistletoe believes that these gay little chipmunks have a kind of night club in the passages between his walls and ceiling. Late at night he hears them dancing: they scamper and skirmish in there, scrambling and pattering to and fro. Light, light are their tiny feet, frolicking in the dry dusty tunnels between the beams. They frisk there like thoughts in the back of the mind. Mr. Mistletoe, as he lies on his couch at night, thinking severely of things he wants to write, has a horrid suspicion that perhaps sometimes they nibble at the electric wires. He wonders whether this could cause