The Rover Boys at Colby Hall | Page 7

mothers at Valley Brook Farm, the fathers
to come down from time to time, and especially over the week ends.
Since Dick, Tom, and Sam had become married the farm had been
enlarged by the purchase of two hundred additional acres. The
farmhouse, too, had been made larger, with the old portion remodeled,
and a water system from the rapidly-growing town of Dexter's Corners,
as well as electric lighting, had been installed. A telephone had been
put in some years previous.
At first after their arrival at their grandfather's home, the four boys had
been content to take it easy, spending their time roaming the fields,
helping to gather the fruit, of which there was great abundance, and in
going fishing and swimming. But then Andy and Randy had found time
growing a little heavy on their hands, and one prank had been followed
by another. Some of the tricks had been played on Jack and Fred, and
they, of course, had done their best to retaliate, and this had, on more
than one occasion, brought forth a forceful, but good-natured, pitched
battle, and the fathers and the others present had had all they could do
to hold the boys in check.

"I never saw such boys," was Mary Rover's comment to her brother
Fred. "Why can't you behave yourselves just as Martha and I do?"
"Oh, girls never have any good times," answered Fred. "They just sit
around and primp up and read, and do things like that."
"Indeed!" and Mary tossed her curly head. "I think we have just as
good times as you boys, every bit; but we don't have to be rough about
it;" and then she ran off to play a game of lawn tennis with her cousin
Martha.
The time was the middle of August, and as the summer was proving to
be an unusually warm one, all the older Rovers were glad enough to
take it easy on the farm, they having earlier in the season been down to
the seashore for a couple of weeks. Dick, Tom and Sam had each taken
a week off at various times, and all managed to get down to the farm
early every Saturday afternoon, to remain until Sunday night or
Monday morning.
And it was late on a Saturday afternoon, when the ladies and the girls
had gone to Dexter's Corners to do some shopping, and while the
fathers were busy reading and writing, that the events occurred with
which the present story opens.
As Dick Rover ran into the farmhouse he heard a slight scream coming
from the sitting-room. The scream was followed by exclamations from
two men, and then a wild thumping as if someone was hitting the floor
with a cane.
"It's a mouse--several of 'em!" came in the voice of Grandfather Rover.
"Oh, my! oh, my! wherever did they come from?" exclaimed old Aunt
Martha.
"Never mind where they came from, I'll fix 'em," asserted old Randolph
Rover, and then followed another thumping as he rushed around
between the chairs and behind the sofa, trying to slaughter some of the
scampering mice with his heavy walking stick.

"Where are they? Where are those mice?" demanded Tom Rover,
giving a hasty glance around the kitchen.
"There is one--under the sink!" ejaculated his brother Sam, and
catching up a stove lifter he let fly with such accurate aim that the
unhappy rodent was despatched on the spot.
"I see another one back of the pantry door," said Tom Rover a moment
later, and then made a dive into the pantry. Here, in a side closet, the
door of which was partly open, he saw a broom and grabbed it quickly.
Then he made a wild pass at the mouse, but the rodent eluded him and
scrambled over the kitchen floor and into the sitting-room.
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Did you ever see so many mice?" came in a
wailing voice from Aunt Martha. She had clambered up on a chair and
stood there holding her dress tightly around her feet.
"It's another of those boys' tricks, that's what it is," asserted Grandfather
Rover. "They ought to be punished for it."
"Yes. But we've got to get rid of these mice first," answered his brother.
Then Randolph Rover, seeing a mouse scampering across the side of
the room, threw his walking stick at it with all his force. But his aim
was poor and the walking stick, striking the edge of the table, glanced
off and hit a fish-globe, smashing it to pieces and sending the water and
the goldfish flying in every direction.
CHAPTER III
WHAT FOLLOWED ANOTHER TRICK
When the hubbub downstairs started the four Rover boys were up in
their adjoining bedrooms partly undressed and in the midst of a couple
of impromptu