Page:The adventures of Ann; stories of colonial times.djvu/92

88 of his daughter, had turned the scale with her; she could not give him up.

Her greatest fear was lest Mrs. Polly should take a notion to search for mice in the grain-chests. She so hoped Nabby would not broach the subject again. But there was a peculiarity about Nabby—she had an exceedingly bitter hatred of rats and mice. Still there was no danger of her investigating the grain-chests on her own account, for she was very much afraid. She would not have lifted one of those lids, with the chance of a rat or mouse being under it, for the world. If ever a mouse was seen in the kitchen Nabby took immediate refuge on the settle or the table and left some one else to do the fighting. So Nabby, being so constituted, could not be easy on the subject this time. All day long she heard rats and mice in the grain-chests; she stopped and listened with her broom, and she stopped and listened with her mop.

Ann went to look, indeed that was the way she smuggled the thief's dinner to him, but her report of nothing the matter with the grain did not satisfy