It wasn't hard to get out through the bedroom window, except for Momma. But she made it all right. And Tommy had a little trouble holding tightly to each member of his family as Daddy lifted him out of the window, but they made it all right too. Of course Aunt Martha didn't make it—how could she? But it was fun watching the firemen in the rain from the Krausmeyer's porch next door as the house and the closet with the hole in the closet all burned up together.

Aunt Martha?

"Funny thing," Tommy heard one fireman say to another the next day, in the sunshine, as they looked over the smouldering ash, "the old bat must have been as dry as dust inside. Twenty years in the department and I never did see a body so completely consumed—teeth, a little bone.... Hey, get on away from here, son! Get along on home with you!"

Daddy and Momma said Aunt Martha had gone away on a trip. Tommy might have known pretty well where she had gone, if he had thought about it, but he didn't think about it. None of his family did. What for? Aunt Martha had had to go away, sure. She went. All right, who missed Aunt Martha?

Anyway, there were lights in all of the closets in the new house they moved to and lots of room for everyone, even baby sister. And there were no holes, not even mouse holes, in any of the closets.

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