"Good heavens!" said Tom, "you don't think that!"
"Why shouldn't they! After Mullinses anything could happen—Brewsters or anything."
"What's a Brewster?" piped up Sara.
"A Brewster's an animal. She gets a strangle-hold on you and never lets go," explained her father.
"What's a Brewster like?" Sara inquired further. She had forgotten her griefs. Her eyes gleamed. There was something about her father's description that arrested her imagination.
"Brewsters are like three dour women draped in black. They look like human beings, but they're really vampires."
"Oo-oo-oo!" cried Sara, having a delicious scary shiver.
"Ghouls, too," her father continued, "they haunt graveyards."
"Oo-oo-oo!" said Sara again. "Sumpin' like ghosts?"
"Worse," her father told her impressively.
Here Sara banged a little fist on the table until the dishes rattled.
"I'll tell you what, Father," she declared, "we won't let um in. If I see three black ones coming in here me and Robert and Jamie'll drive them off. We'll throw things at um! We won't let um in! We'll set Uncle Zotsby's dog on 'em."
"No, you won't set Uncle Zotsby's dog on 'em. I'm not going to keep 'em off," growled Robert, deep in the gloom into which he had retired at his father's admonition, for it brought to his mind only too plainly the bitterest disappointment of his life, which had occurred the night before when Mr. Mullins had offered to take him off for a tour in his car. "Pack him in as easy as not," he had repeatedly urged. Since then life to Robert had seemed a stagnant pool. He realized that
