"Why, Lizbeth," said Mother from the dark. Quick as a flash you snuggled up to Lizbeth’s side. "The Gummy-gum ’ll get you if you don’t stop," you whispered, warningly—but with one dismal wail Lizbeth was out of bed and in Mother’s arms. Then you knew all was over. Desperately you awaited retribution, humming a little song, and so it was to the tune of "I want to be an angel" that you heard Lizbeth sob out her awful tale: "Harry ... he ... he said the Gummy-gum ’d get me ... if I told about the p’serves." And it was _you_ the Gummy-gum got that time, and your blood, you thought, almost came. But other nights when you went to bed—nights after days when you had both been good and loved each other—it was fine to lie there in the dark with Lizbeth, playing Make-Believe before you fell asleep. "I tell you," you said, putting up your foot so that the covers rose upon it, making a little tent—"I tell you; let’s be Indians." "Let’s," said Lizbeth. "And this is our little tent, and there’s bears outside what ’ll eat you up if you don’t look out." Lizbeth shivered and drew her knees up to her chin, so that she was nothing but a little warm roll under the wigwam. "And now the bears are coming—wow! wow! wow!" And as the great hungry beasts pushed their snouts under the canvas and growled and gnashed their teeth, Lizbeth, little squaw, squealed with terror, and seized you as you lay there helpless in your triple rôle of tent and bears and Indian brave; seized you in the ticklish ribs so that the wigwam came tumbling about your ears, and the Indian brave rolled and shrieked with laughter, and the brute bears fled to their mountain caves. "Children!" "W-what?" "Stop that noise and go right to sleep. Do you hear me?" Was it not the voice of the mamma bear? Stealthily you crept under the fallen canvas, which had grown smaller, somehow, in the _mêlée_, so that when you pulled it up to your chin and tucked it in around you, Lizbeth was out in the cold; and when Lizbeth tucked herself in, then you were shivering. But by-and-by you huddled close in the twisted sheets and talked low beneath the edge of the coverlet, so that no one heard you—not even the Gummy-gum, who spent his nights on the back stairs. "Does the Gummy-gum eat little folks while they’re asleep?" asked Lizbeth, with a precautionary snuggle-up. "No; ’cause the Gummy-gum is afraid of the little black gnomes what live in the pillows." "Well, if the little black gnomes live in the pillows, why can’t you feel them then?" "’Cause, now, they’re so teenty-weenty and so soft." "And can’t you ever see them at all?" "No; ’cause they don’t come out till you’re asleep." "Oh ... Well, Harry—now—if a Gummy-gum had a head like a horse, and a tail like a cow, and a bill like a duck, what?" "Why—why, he _wouldn’t_, ’cause he _isn’t_." "Oh ... Well, is the Gummy-gum just afraid of the little gnomes, and that’s all?"