"We might make them for gifts," remarked Grace. "I think them too sweet for words!"

"And that perfume is--orchid, isn't it?" asked Madaline. "It is too delicate for anything else."

"Yes, momsey likes orchid, and dad buys it, so I guess that's her sachet. Good-night again, girls, and to-morrow we go hunting our wood-nymph; and, girls," with a premonitory perk of her shapely head, "be sure to lock your window because it is right off the porch roof, and with Aunt Audrey away, we can't be sure of old Michael's police ability."

"Oh, Cleo," gulped Madaline, who, being dimply, always seemed the baby of the trio, "do you think anyone would climb up the post poles?"

"No, certainly not, silly," replied Cleo with a show of scorn, "but you see, I must share the responsibility when Aunt Audrey is away, and it is always best to keep windows directly off low roofs locked. Then, if anyone should try to get in we would be sure to hear them. Run away now, and try on your new Billie Burkes. Maybe I'll come in and inspect them when I get myself ready."

The low mountain house presently echoed with the girls' laughter, for indulging in their usual propensity to prolong recreation, a dressing-up contest was crowded in the hour of undressing. Billie Burks and boudoir caps, under long capes and wild draperies, furnished equipment adequate and ridiculous, so that even Jennie, who was dragged from her mending out to the second hall to serve as audience, found herself laughing foolishly at the girl scouts' antics.

Cleo impersonated "Walla-Hoola," with a string of twenty neckties (borrowed from Uncle Guy's room) dangling around her waist, over a combination of pink crepe and bluebird pajamas. At the back of her neck, in savage glee, was propped the piano feather duster, the same being somewhat supported by another necktie of Kelly green hue, that banded her cla.s.sic brow.

Madaline "tried on" Circe, all swathed up in a billowy white mosquito netting, that might never again be used as a bed canopy. She found her "rock" on a third floor landing, and clung frantically to the stairs post, while the wild sea of perfectly good oak steps dashed savagely at her uncovered toes. She also pink-pinked Cleo's ukelele, according to Circean traditions.

Grace rolled around the floor in the ocean waves--the lost soul who was to be saved by someone, anyone would do, so far as Grace was concerned.

All she had to worry about apparently was the roll. Had she been a little older, and just a little more rotund, one might have suspected her indulging in a treatment; but it required, finally, the combined strength of Cleo and Jennie to extricate the "lost soul" from the meshes into which that roll and a couple of fine silkoline quilts had engulfed her.

"Mrs. Dunbar wouldn't like to have the quilts soiled," interposed Jennie wisely, "and now, girls, dear, do run along to bed. You've had a fine time, and I enjoyed the show first rate."

"Thank you, Jennie!" panted Grace, crawling out of her coc.o.o.n like a human caterpillar. "We had a lovely time also. And, Jennie, will you please be sure to leave your door open? Michael may be a very sound sleeper, and you know we all have to be on guard to-night."

"Indeed, Grace, not a step could come up that gravel path, or through the gra.s.s itself, but I would hear it"--Jennie was proud of her nocturnally acute sense of sound, or suspicion of mere noises--"and you may sleep sound as Michael himself, for nothing will come near this lodge unbeknownst to Jennie Marlow."

"That's a good Jennie," Cleo patted the trusted servant, "and if I hear even the tiniest bit of a noise, like a chipmunk, or a tree toad, you can expect me to come pouncing into your nice big feather bed."

"And leave us!" protested Madaline, who was no longer the entrancing Circe.

"There'll be room for all of you, crosswise, like our old buckboard,"

Jennie a.s.sured them once more, and this time the "good-night" was allowed to take effect.

A half hour later Cragsnook was snuggled in the stillness of a beautifully soft night, pillowed against the Jersey mountains, and cradled in the sweet scented foliage of giant tulip trees and ambitious beeches. The trees at night seemed unfathomable, and this denseness increased the darkness and magnified the shadows.

But the three girl scouts under Jennie Marlow's protection, slept and dreamed of their next day's quest in search of Mary, the phantom wood nymph, or Mary the fleet-footed maid of Second Mountain.

She must surely live somewhere between Bellaire and that mountain, beyond which the girls had no definite idea of territory. A pretty lake formed the boundary, and up to that line they had planned their search.

CHAPTER V

ON THE TRAIL

After all their preparations for burglars or other scary visitors, it was rather disappointing to come down to breakfast next morning just as calm and complaisant as usual; in fact it was calmer, for the absence of Aunt Audrey was readily felt in something like loneliness. Madaline was even threatened with a fit of homesickness.

Jennie brought the m.u.f.fins, and it struck Cleo she was quieter than usual. A snappy "good morning" in that tone that implies "eat in a hurry and clear out," added another note to the already discordantly charged atmosphere.

"Do you know, girls," announced Grace, pushing aside her grapefruit, "I feel exactly as if something were surely going to happen to-day."

"So do I," spoke up Cleo; "I feel as if a nice early hike over the big gray mountain is going to happen, and I am sure of it."

"But I mean something odd and queer," insisted Grace.

"Did you feel that way the day you tied the man to the tree?" teased Cleo.

"If you did, I'm not going out with you," spoke up Madaline, disregarding table manners to the extent of making a pyramid from her yellow m.u.f.fin crumbs. "I feel awfully queer, too, and I'm not going to take a risk with Grace, if she's going to be reckless."

"Can't see why you should fear me, Madie." Then noticing the homesick look on the usually dimpling face, Grace "broke out," as Cleo called her spells of exhilaration. "I'll tell you," offered Grace. "We'll take our mountain sticks, loaded water pistols, and I have Benny's air gun, and we'll go hunting. Of course we wouldn't really shoot bunnies, but--we'll shoo them. Andy Mack told me yesterday the woods are just full of all kinds of young hunters now, but they are mostly from the city, and after flowers. You can take a bag or a basket, Madaline, to carry home your precious roots in, because you know what a time we always have spoiling our hats that way."

Madaline gave a wan little smile, for her, and then surprised her chums with declaring she believed she would stay home and help Jennie transplant some lettuce, as she loved to do transplanting.

Whether or not the remark was overheard in the kitchen, Jennie swung open the door as Madaline finished speaking, and as she confronted the girls there was no mistaking the look on her closely lined face.

Jennie was mad!

"Lettuce!" she repeated. "Indeed we have none to transplant. My beautiful bed is entirely destroyed!"

"Oh, how?" exclaimed the girls.

"I don't know," replied the maid, still seething with indignation, "but I'm likely to think it wasn't a mountain rabbit that did the damage, for the plants were yanked up by the roots, and bunnies just nibble the tops!"

"Oh, that's such a shame!" declared Cleo, "and you were counting on having it just right when Uncle Guy returns. Who would do that?"

"Well, there's some awful queer folks around here lately," went on Jennie, as she slipped the breakfast dishes on the tray. "They don't know anything about folks' rights. Think everything growing is common property. There's one old woman who pretends she doesn't understand me when I tell her to stop digging in the lawn, and what she digs is nothing but old roots and weed stuff," and Jennie threw back her shoulders, a.s.suming an att.i.tude of righteous indignation.

"What kind of looking woman is she?" asked Cleo, thinking, of course, of the queer woman in the foreign costume.

"She looks like a circus parade," Jennie declared, "but she's no more circus than I am. It's lots easier to hide mistakes when one pretends she's foreign and doesn't understand."

"And has she a little girl with her?" questioned Grace. Even Madaline was interested now.

"Yes, poor child. A half-scared-to-death little thing, that runs like a bunnie if you speak to her," replied the maid.

"That's just whom we are looking for," declared Cleo. "We saw them the day we came, and felt that the little girl needed friends. Then at the Cross Country Run the other day she almost knocked Andy Mack down; she jumped out so suddenly just as he turned into the last lap. She is crazy, I think," finished Cleo.

"Then, I'm not going to hunt her," declared Madaline, "crazy folks are dangerous."

Jennie laughed at their expressed fears. "That child isn't crazy," she declared, "but it's a wonder she isn't, with that old woman tagging around. Well, I don't suppose she stole my lettuce, but I'm going to watch out for people on these grounds after this," and Jennie swung herself through the double acting door with such energy, the portal made a swift return trip on its hinges.

"There's some connection between buying roots in the drug store, digging roots from the lawns, and--maybe she took the lettuce," figured Cleo.

"Oh, come on," implored Grace. "I'm sure we will find that little fairy out to-day, and I promise you, Madie, I won't do anything rash.

Come along, there's a dear," and Grace slipped her arms around the girl who threatened to come down with a fit of lonesomeness. "Come on, maybe we'll meet Andy's little brother."

"I'll go, not on account of the little brother though," quickly explained Madaline, to forestall a laugh.

But it was the little brother, Malcolm by name and Mally by adoption, who "happened to meet" the girls, just under the mountain.