Page:Poor Cecco - 1925.djvu/181

Rh rats paid no attention to him. Straight down the garden path they poured, scattering the toys in their course, over the parsley bed, right to the old willow, and by the time the toys had pulled themselves together and hurried back, they were already hard at work gnawing a hole in the side of the tree.

“Look!” Jensina cried, clapping her hand. “They’re cutting a doorway! Aren’t they clever? I told you they could do anything!”

The rats were in fact working in a circle, clinging with their feet to the bark while they gnawed. Soon the sawdust began to fall in a powdery heap that grew rapidly larger.

“Jensina!” Bulka cried. “How can I ever thank you!”

Jensina indeed was the heroine of the moment. Even the dolls smiled and tried to make up for the mean way they had acted. How they had misjudged her! If only, Gladys thought, she had known beforehand what an important person Jensina really was!

Meantime Anna, always timid, had been so alarmed by the sudden flood of rats that she ran away up the side path, straight towards the onion bed. Staring up at the sky as always, she never saw Poor Cecco’s trap until she had stumbled right on it. The stick came down with a whack, one corner of Anna’s green meadow sank into the hole Poor Cecco had so carefully dug, and stuck fast; there she