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wished it was September and we could go back to the city where there isn't room for any kind of horseman to go haunting at night.
     
     
     
Chapter Eight
     
     
        ONE gray, cloudy Saturday afternoon Mrs. Ellis said she had to do some shopping. Mouse didn't want to go so her mother said she could stay at our house. Mouse gave me yo-yo lessons for half an hour, and all that time I wished there was something I could do better than Mouse and the other kids in Tarrytown. If only they had to live in the city for a month, I thought. Then I'd show them plenty! Probably not one of them could take a crosstown bus without getting lost!
     
        When we got tired of yo-yoing Mouse said, "Let's call the twins and see if they can come over."
     
        The twins are Sondra and Jane Van Arden. They swim at the pool too. They don't look anything alike. Sondra is very shy and quiet and she always looks at your feet when you talk to her. They are both pretty good swimmers, but I have never seen Sondra dunk anyone. That's why I like her better than Jane.
     
        When Mouse called them they said they would be right over because if they stayed home their mother was going to make them clean out their closets.
     
        When they got to my house we had a snack of Oreos and milk. Sondra and Jane open their cookies and eat all the icing first. I used to do that but Libby said I was disgusting. When we were finished with our snack Mouse said, "Want to play indoor hide-and-seek?"
     
        "Hey, yeah," Jane said. "At your house, Mouse!"
     
        "But we can't," I said. "Her mother isn't home."
     
        Mouse and Jane laughed then and Sondra said, "There's a special way to get into the Mouse House when her mother isn't home."
     
        "And just wait till you see it!" Jane said.
     
        So we walked down the road to Mouse's and when we got there the girls showed me the milk door. It's a small door on the side of the house, near the kitchen. Mouse unlatched it and said, "See, this is where the milkman puts our stuff. My mother never has to go outside to get it. Isn't that neat?"
     
        "Yeah," I said. "It's really neat. It's kind of a built-in milk box!"
     
        "Right!" Jane said. "Only it's not a box, because it leads right into the house."
     
        Mouse boosted Jane up and Jane crawled through the milk door. Then Sondra boosted Mouse and she crawled through. I gave Sondra a boost and was wondering who would boost me when Sondra cried, "Help . . . I'm stuck!"
     
        "You can't be," Mouse said.
     
        "I am!" Sondra yelled. "I really am!"
     
        "You need to go on a diet!" Jane called from inside.
     
        "Please do something!" Sondra begged.
     
        Since I was the only one left on the outside I pulled Sondra's legs, trying to get her to back out. When that didn't work, Jane and Mouse pulled from the inside, hoping to get her through the milk door. But nothing happened.
     
        Sondra cried, "I'm doomed! I'll be here forever."
     
        Jane said we should call the Fire Department and let them chop her out, but Mouse said her mother might get mad about that.
     
        I could see that unless I took charge of the situation nothing would get done. So I said, "Mouse, you and Jane open the regular door and help me on the outside."
     
        "I never thought of that," Mouse said.
     
        "You should have," I told her. "Because if you had been the only one to crawl through the milk door in the first place, none of this would have happened. You could have unlocked the back door and we would have walked in like any other human beings."
     
        Mouse didn't answer me, but she and Jane did what I told them to and joined me on the outside. "Okay," I said, "now pull Sondra by the legs."
     
        All three of us pulled as hard as we could, but she still wouldn't budge. "We need rope. Do you have any?" I asked Mouse.
     
        "I think so," she said. "In the