Editor's note: This is an installment of a chapter from Jean Bell Mosley's book that was first published in 1960.

Lou and I were the only ones enjoying the benefits of the professor. After the new pump was installed we could fill the trough in five minutes. "And look at the time we've got left for other problems!" Lou teased Mom.

This extra time was usually spent watching the white rat the professor kept in some sort of wire maze out in the back yard.

"You observe, now," he would say, "that he has learned not to go that way after the cheese because this battery contraption here will give him a shock. Soon he will learn there is fine wire across this opening and he will avoid that. One of the main differences between mice and men is that it takes one longer to figure things out than the other." Then, just as we were getting real interested in the rat, Grandpa would holler, "Wahhhater. "Wahhhater!"

"Do you know any way of stopping Grandpa from hollering that?" I asked the professor.

"Yes," he acknowledged, modestly. "Power of Suggestion, you know. Might be an interesting project."

At the dinner table the next day, the professor asked that water from the spring be used for his coffee and drinking water. This just added another maze to our runs, for now we not only had to carry water to Grandpa, but water from the spring especially for the professor. But we were patient and observant. Rome wasn't built in a day, the professor reminded us.

He'd go to the well now with Grandpa, pump himself a big drink, bring it to his lips, stop and sniff, then throw the water away like he wasn't thirsty after all. Other times he would adjust his bifocals and peer down into the dipper, and as if having his suspicions confirmed, dash it out through the honeysuckle vines.

"There isn't anything really in that water, is there?" Lou demanded when we had the professor alone.

"No, but there could be," he said, in a manner obviating himself of all intrigue.

At such times when the professor was wordlessly condemning the water, Grandpa would look like someone had slapped him in the face and would cut his own drink short. And then, when he thought no one was watching, he'd sniff at the water himself and peer into the dipper.

On Sunday, after the professor had started this project about the water, Uncle Ed and Aunt Grace came out for a visit. Grandpa never once offered to take them out for a good cold drink.

"What's the matter with Pa?" Uncle Ed asked Grandma later in the day. "Seems to be in low spirits about something."

"Matter enough," Grandma said, her eyes flashing. "This so-called professor and his white rat we got here has just about knocked the props out from under him. You know how proud he's always been about the well. Seems like it's sort of sustained him. Well, he doesn't seem to enjoy it any more. Won't even sit out there with us in the evening."

"Well, I never though Pa would let anyone get next to him like that."

"Neither did I, but the children say he doesn't even holler for water from the fields more'n once a day. Course I always thought he overdid that a little, but he looks plumb tuckered out when he comes in at noon now."

Lou and I didn't like it either. We had more time to watch the white rat but we kept straining our ears to hear Grandpa's familiar call and were a little sorry we'd asked the professor to stop it. We even took Grandpa a bucket of water one day when he hadn't called for it, but instead of sloshing what was left over his head, he dashed it at the horses.

It made our personalities split. We were glad to get out of so much water carrying, but yet we felt sorry for Grandpa. He had a hurt look, like a hound pup that had just been kicked and expected to be kicked again.

"We did it," Lou confessed to Grandma one day when she was discussing Grandpa's malady with Mom. "We had the professor use his Power of Suggestion."

"What's that?" Grandma demanded suspiciously. "I thought he had something besides hay fever."

"Oh, it's just doing things and saying things that gets someone to believing like you want them to, so he says."

"You don't say?" Grandma said, and went out to ponder the white rat a while, muttering, "Maybe this works both ways."

At supper that evening, Grandma helped herself to the green beans, took a bite, tasted inquiringly, took the bowl and set it off the table. Next morning she peered into the jelly glass and quietly removed it.

"That pork taste all right to you?" she asked the rest of us at the dinner table. We thought it did, but not being satisfied, she got up and inspected the glass jar from which it had come.

"I tell you," she said from time to time, "if we don't get rid of the mice around here I don't know what we're going to do.

"Whew, wild onions in that butter," she announced, sniffing around her churn. All this went on while the professor was at hand.

The professor started losing weight with so much tainted food and Grandma winked at the white rate. Then came the master stroke.

"'Bout time we started sending Uncle Matt his water," she remarked one day after a conspiratorial conference with the rest of us. "Suffers with hay fever, you know," she informed the professor. "Loses weight." She clucked her tongue sadly. "Only thing that keeps him going long bout this time of the year is water from our well. He swears by it. Says it keeps up his appetite. I think it's just a mental quirk, don't you, professor?"

"Could be," the professor smiled tolerantly, wiping his eyes and nose.

"Course you notice how healthy we all are," Grandma added. "Say, you look a little green around the gills. Why don't you try it again?"

We left off the spring water first and nothing was said. Then Mama and Grandma began telling the professor how much better his hay fever was getting.

"You really think so? Kerchoo!" he asked, wiping his bifocals abstractedly.

"Oh, it's noticeable," Grandma remarked. "And your appetite's picking up, too."

Then one day Grandpa caught the professor out at the well drinking from the gourd dipper. "Guess it's all in getting used to it," he told Grandpa. "Don't seem so flat as at first."

The very next day came the familiar call from the field, "Wahhhater! "Wahhhater!"

Everything was working out just fine. Grandpa's pride in his well was restored. The new pump at the barn was a wonderful labor saver, and all paid for, and the professor was leaving.

"I can't tell you how much I appreciate your letting me stay out here this summer," he said. "Through the trial and error process, I feel that I've at last found the kind of life that I like. And I'd like to leave the white rat for the children. I think it will be good for them to continue the study. If one could get off in early life to the right approach, not relying on Defense Mechanisms or rationalizing, it makes for a happier life. And in return I'd like to ask a little favor of them." He turned to us. "Would you be so kind as to ship me five gallons of the water every week same as you do your Uncle Matt?"

"But we don't --" I began, and found Lou's elbow in my side.

"We'd be glad to," she assured the professor.

Now, instead of hearing Grandpa's lusty call from the fields, the distant freight trains seemed to whistle, "Wahhhhhhater. Wahhhhhhater," and very dutifully on each Saturday we took a can of crystal water, hand-drawn from some mysterious subterranean depth, to the station to be shipped to the professor, and picked up the returning can.

We moved the white rat to the barn and it was more and more of a chore to feed him, though we did this dutifully, too, throwing the food into the block at the far corner of the cage and leaving him alone to wander his way to it.

"The hair-brained numbskull," Lou murmured one day. Seemed like all of our troubles were tied up with that rat.

"Look," I said. "He went directly to it that time." We stared in amazement. The next day he did the same thing and the day after that.

"Well, what do you know, he really did learn," Lou said. "Still seems like a hair-brained numbskull to take him so long, though. I wonder what it was the professor wanted us to learn from him?"

"Search me," I replied. "He was always pointing out that humans were so much smarter than rats, that it wouldn't take them so long to figure out something."

"Well, are we humans or rats?" Lou asked, looking off into space. "Yeah," she said slowly, as if answering her own question. "Get some paper and pencil," she demanded.

I hastened after the required articles and sat patiently while she made her notes or whatever it was she was writing. When she was through she handed it to me.

Dear Professor:

The white rat got loose and may have fallen into the well. Therefore, we know you don't want any more water. Thanks for letting us have him. We have learned a lot.

Kind regards,

Lou

"But he didn't fall in the well," I protested.

"Well, he could have," Lou said, sounding just like the professor. She reached over and opened the door to the cage.