"O, Amy!" Ruth's whispered exclamation conveyed an extraordinary amount of exasperation for three syllables. And then as Amy remained up-right, staring intently into the darkness, Ruth was conscious of a curious p.r.i.c.king of the scalp. For she herself distinctly heard the sound to which Amy referred, and, truth to tell, it was not unlike the rustling of the unseen garments which had figured so frequently in the stories to which they had lately been listening.

"I can hear it as plain as anything, Amy. Do you suppose it is the maple-tree back of the window?"

"Of course it's the maple-tree," Ruth replied in a husky whisper. How she envied Amy. Amy frankly acknowledged to being a coward, and poor Ruth wished that she herself did not have a reputation for courage to sustain. For certainly that sound was not the whisper of the wind in the boughs of the maple. It was in the room, apparently at the foot of the bed.

A long silence followed Ruth's bravely mendacious a.s.surance. Amy lay down at length and drew the coverlet over her head. The thumping of Ruth's heart gradually steadied into an ordinary beat. Just as she was telling herself that Amy's foolish fancies had made her nervous, and she had imagined the peculiar sound, her heart jumped again. Amy's shivering body suddenly huddled against hers, gave convincing testimony to the fact that Ruth's ears were not the only ones to catch something unusual.

"What do you suppose it is?" choked Amy.

This time Ruth made no attempt to hold the maple-tree responsible. "I don't know," she whispered. The sound that vibrated through the room was such as might be produced if a finger-nail were drawn across the window screen. The thought entered Ruth's mind, that perhaps some one was trying to enter the room by the window, and supernatural horrors paled beside this possibility.

But this demonstration also was succeeded by a puzzling silence.

Gradually the tense muscles of the two frightened girls relaxed, and they ventured to exchange perplexed comments on the mysterious interruptions to the peace of the night. "It certainly was the screen,"

declared Amy. "Do you suppose that the wind blowing through it could make a noise like that?"

Ruth did not think it likely, but forbore to say so, and after half an hour of quiet, weariness again a.s.serted itself and she began to feel agreeably drowsy. Then Amy caught her arm and with the startled pinch, Ruth's hopes of sleep were indefinitely postponed.

"There it is again," said Amy, her teeth fairly chattering. "There's that rustling."

"Sh!" Ruth whispered back and her hand found Amy's in the dark. This time the rustling continued. It was a curiously elusive sound, as difficult to locate as to understand. At one minute it seemed at the foot of the bed, and again off in the corner of the room, and once Ruth was almost sure that it was over her head. And that was the time when it seemed to her that her heart must stop beating.

"Ruth!" Amy s.n.a.t.c.hed away her hand in her consternation. "Ruth--I'm going to sneeze!"

"You mustn't!" protested Ruth panic-stricken. What appalling consequences were to be apprehended from so rash an act, she herself could not have told. But she was certain that if Amy sneezed, her own self-control would give way, and she would scream. "Smother it," she commanded fiercely.

Amy grasped the sheet in a heroic effort to obey, but she was too late.

She sneezed, and to poor Ruth's unstrung nerves, the sound was only to be compared in volume to a peal of thunder. The mysterious rustling ceased, and just outside the door a board creaked.

"Girls!" The tentative whisper stole softly through the half-open door.

"Girls, are you awake?"

"Oh, Peggy!" There was untold relief in that brief welcome. Peggy's presence brought a sense of reinforcement, even against supernatural terrors. Noiselessly Peggy crept into the room, and perched on the edge of the bed. Considering the lateness of the hour, her air was peculiarly alert.

"I knew by Amy's sneeze that she was awake, too, and I thought I'd come in. I never had such a wakeful night in my life."

"Have you been hearing things, too?" demanded Amy, with an immediate accession of respect for her own fears if Peggy shared them.

Peggy hesitated. "Well, it hasn't seemed as quiet as most of the nights," she replied, evasively.

"Rustling in all the corners, and the screen tw.a.n.ging, that's what we've had," exclaimed Ruth in an excited whisper.

Peggy's silence indicated that such phenomena did not surprise her. "I suppose," she remarked at length, in her most judicial manner, "that we all got nervous over those uncanny stories, and so we're ready to imagine--Oh!"

Something had swooped by her, almost brushing her cheek, and stirring her hair with the breeze made by its pa.s.sing. Peggy's m.u.f.fled shriek had two echoes.

"What is it?" demanded Amy, a hysterical catch in her voice. "Oh, Peggy, what has happened?" And Peggy's only reply was a stern demand for the matches.

The little candle, flaring up at last, showed nothing unusual, unless three girls wide awake at half-past two in the morning could be included under that head. Peggy stared incredulously about the empty room, and then faced her friends.

"Girls, I don't know what ails us all," said Peggy honestly, "but I'm pretty sure none of us will go to sleep till daylight. So, if you've no objection, I'm going to sit here and talk till the sun's up."

n.o.body had any objection. In fact, with the little candle flickering on the table, and Peggy sitting at the foot of the bed, discussing commonplace things, Amy and Ruth felt an immediate accession of courage.

Luckily their time of waiting was not long. Daybreak comes early on a summer morning, and by the time the candle was burned to the socket, the pale daylight had stolen into the room and all three watchers were certain that they could go to sleep.

It seemed to Peggy that she had barely dozed off, before Dorothy awoke her. Dorothy was standing by the window with one stocking on. When Dorothy's toilet had progressed to the point of putting on one stocking, she generally thought of something else more interesting.

"Oh, Dorothy dear," implored poor Peggy, turning on her pillow, "it can't be time to get up yet."

Dorothy crossed the room, and stood beside the bed. "Aunt Peggy," she inquired gravely, "did you ever see a mousie with an umbrella?"

"A mouse--with an umbrella!" repeated Peggy stupidly, wondering if she were too sleepy to understand, or if Dorothy were only talking nonsense.

"Of course not."

"Well, I did. There's one hanging to our screen."

Peggy arose with alacrity. Suspended head downward from the screen, was indeed a mouse-like shape, with the folded wings of a gnome, which Dorothy had not unnaturally mistaken for an umbrella. Apparently the little creature had pa.s.sed an active night, and was now enjoying his well-earned repose. Peggy took one look and crossed the hall with a bound. Amy and Ruth were sound asleep, but Peggy was too excited to be merciful.

"Girls! Girls! Come quick and see our ghost before it wakes up!"

The startling summons brought the sleepers to their feet in a twinkling and when Peggy introduced the explanation of the night's mystery, there was a good deal of shame-faced laughter. Tacitly the girls agreed that the joke would be more enjoyable if its circulation were strictly limited, and even when at the breakfast-table Aunt Abigail remarked that she never saw such air for producing sound sleep, three heavy-eyed girls exchanged glances, and kept their own counsel.

But a little later Dorothy was anxious for enlightenment on a point in natural history. "Aunt Peggy, what makes you call a mousie a goose?"

"Why, I didn't, dear. A mouse and a goose aren't the least bit alike."

"But I heard you say it, Aunt Peggy. When I showed you the mousie, you ran and said, 'Here's our goose.'"

As good luck would have it, Ruth and Amy were the only ones to overhear the remark, and Peggy was not called upon to satisfy more than Dorothy's curiosity.

"That funny little thing that looks like a mouse, Dorothy, except for its horrid black wings, is called a bat. And the goose was only Aunt Peggy."

"And Ruth, another," remarked the owner of that name.

"And I was Number Three. Three gooses instead of three graces," was Amy's addition, after which the three laughed in the fashion which Dorothy found so mystifying, and consequently objectionable.

That was not the last of the story-telling evenings by any means. Aunt Abigail had abundant opportunity to display her _repertoire_. She told pathetic stories, which brought the tears to the girls' eyes, and funny stories, which made them laugh until they cried, and the most thrilling tales of adventure. But she was never called upon to duplicate her early success. In the opinion of her entire audience, apparently, one night of ghost stories was enough for the entire summer.

CHAPTER V

A SAFE AND SANE FOURTH

"The three-legged race is what I'm dying to see," Amy declared. "It sounds so mysterious, you know, like some new kind of quadruped. No, I don't mean that," she added hastily, as Peggy laughed. "Quadrupeds have to have four legs, don't they? Well, anyway, it sounds like something queer."

The village celebration of the approaching Fourth of July had for some days been the chief topic of conversation in Dolittle Cottage. The idea of a picnic, with the whole community invited, was in itself a startling innovation to girls who were city-bred, and the entertainment promised in the shape of various contests, winding up with a baseball game between the "Fats" and the "Leans" appealed to them all, more or less strongly. Peggy, with that faculty for picking up information which would have made her an unqualified success as a newspaper reporter, was continually announcing new items of interest, that Farmer Cole's Joe was to pitch for the "Leans," or that Jerry Morton had won the potato race the previous Fourth, and meant to enter again, or that Rosetta Muriel disdained the promiscuous appeal of the picnic, but thought she might bring herself to view the fireworks in the evening.