The janitor stopped swish-swishing and looked around the room suspiciously. "_Hello!_" George shrieked. His throat felt raw. The janitor looked down and saw the mouse. "Hello yourself," he said. He was an ignorant old man and, when he saw the mouse shouting hello at him, he assumed right away that it was a mouse shouting hello to him. "_The trap!_" the mouse bellowed. "Stop _shouting_!" the janitor cried, annoyed. He liked to think as he worked, and he hated loud noises. "What about the trap?" "My wife doesn't want you to put it by the front door any more," George said, still speaking loudly, so that the janitor could hear, but at least not bellowing so that it tore his throat. "She's afraid it might hurt the children." "_Will_ it hurt the children?" the janitor demanded. "No," George replied. "They know all about traps--but my wife still wants it removed." "Sorry," the janitor said, "but my orders are to put a trap by every mousehole. This is an atomic plant, and they don't want mice." "They do, too!" George said defiantly. "They brought my great-great-grandfather Michael here themselves and exposed him to hard radiations. Otherwise _I_ wouldn't be here." "I can't help it," the janitor snapped. "I have to obey orders." "What will I tell my wife?" George shouted. That stopped the janitor. He had a wife of his own. "I guess I can take it up with the supervisor," he finally said. "All right," George shouted. "_Thanks!_" * * * * * The janitor picked up the trap and moved it over to the front door. He watched, interested, as George promptly pushed it several inches along the wall. Then he turned and busily swish-swished more dust around the room. "Well, what did he say?" Clara asked George as soon as he came back into the house. "Said he'd take it up with the supervisor," George said, settling down in an armchair. "George," she ordered, "you get up this instant and make sure that he really does!" "Look," George pleaded, "he said he would." "He may have been lying," Clara said promptly. "You go right up to the supervisor's room and see." So, George reluctantly heaved himself out of the chair and ran through the mouseways in the wall until he came to the mousehole in the supervisor's room. At that moment, the janitor came in and the supervisor looked up, annoyed. He was a fat man, with stubble on his cheek, and he walked with a waddle. "There's a mouse in room 112 who doesn't want a trap by his front door," the janitor said simply. "You're crazy," the supervisor said. The janitor shrugged. "What should I tell him?" he asked. "Tell him to come up here and speak to me himself," the supervisor said, feeling very clever. "I'm right here," George cried, stepping out of the mousehole and neatly side-stepping the mousetrap beside it. "There he is now," the janitor said, pointing. "My God!" whispered the supervisor, who'd had some education. "A hallucination."