THE RAT 



that 1 came down with an awful bump somewhere 

 just over your head ; my ribs are still sore. Luckily, 

 you young folk are very sound sleepers, or you 

 would certainly be frightened at the noise which we 

 make. 1 was climbing along a beam and lost my 

 foothold ; my poor old claws are getting very blunt. 

 I shall break my back one of these days, and that 

 will indeed be a disgrace. You would think that a 

 broken back was the same old broken back any- 

 where, but the way in which it is broken makes a 

 lot of difference in our estimation. Dog breaks 

 rank highest, and then stick breaks; boot breaks are 

 mean, because they ought never to happen ; shot 

 breaks are bad, because you call it ' waste of good 

 powder'; also, for some inexplicable reason, they 

 kill us dead and take away our year of ghost-life. 

 But to break your own back — ugh ! I have never 

 heard that it robs you of your ghost-year, but I am 

 quite sure that none of the other rat ghosts would 

 take the smallest notice of you if you came among 

 them as the result of such an accident, and that 

 would be dull, because ghosts like notice just as 

 much as living creatures. Some people go so far 

 as to say that if a ghost attracts no notice for a 

 year it pines away and dies. I suppose that this is 

 the reason why they do such funny things, as, for 



