When, the next day, Junior sat down to strum tunes, Ferdinand was badly alarmed for a while. The noise, heard from inside, was rather terrible, and of course Ferdinand did not understand it. When Junior played the Star Spangled Banner Ferdinand was much too shaken to stand up and salute. He supposed it was a very severe thunderstorm, and his whiskers went a little gray with fright. But the playing did not last long, and then he discovered a very generous deposit of fudge crumbs up toward the treble end of the keyboard, and that consoled him.
How long Ferdinand stayed inside the piano I do not know. It must have been several days, for he had time to get quite fat on his rich diet. Then came Helen's birthday (she was six). Mr. Mistletoe wanted to compose a folk-dance in honour of the occasion. He knew nothing at all about music, but he enjoyed sitting down some'times to play random chords and invent tunes of his own that came into his head. He played very forcibly, with much attention to the bass and a strong foot on the loud pedal.
The tune that he composed for the birthday was supposed to give a suggestion of Helen going upstairs to bed. It began with a series of chords
