"And as I don't walk in my sleep," he added, "the trap-door needn't be shut." "Mice, Willie!" said his mother, in a tone of much significance.
"The cat and I are good friends," returned Willie.

"She'll be pleased enough to sleep with me." "You don't hit the thing at all," said his father.

"I wonder a practical man like you, Willie, doesn't see it at once.

Even if I were at the expense of ceiling the whole roof with lath and plaster, we should find you, some morning in summer, baked black as a coal; or else, some morning in winter frozen so stiff that, when we tried to lift you, your arm snapped off like a dry twig of elder." "Ho! ho! ho!" laughed Willie; "then there would be the more room for grannie." His father laughed with him, but his mother looked a little shocked.
"No, Willie," said his father again; "you must make another attempt.

You must say with Hamlet when he was puzzled for a plan--'About my brains!' Perhaps they will suggest something wiser next time." Willie lay so long awake that night, thinking, that _Wheelie_ pulled him before he had had a wink of sleep.