"You and Betty come over to-morrow, too," said Miss Katherine to Lloyd, as she b.u.t.toned up the blue dress again, so that Magnolia could go back to supper. "I'd like to add Boy Blue and Bo-Peep to my Mother Goose gallery."

It was dark when Lloyd and Magnolia squeezed through the fence again and ran up the stairs to the room. As Lloyd pa.s.sed the portiere at the end of the hall she pushed it aside and drew back the bolt, as she had promised Kitty to do. They had barely time to lay their bundles on Magnolia's bed when the supper-bell rang, and they ran down to the dining-room. Lloyd was all aglow with excitement and pleasure over the success of the last hour's work, but Magnolia had shrunk back into the same timid little creature she was before her transformation. She had put her hair back into the tight little tails again before leaving Clovercroft, so that her disguise would be the more complete when she unloosed it and appeared as the little knave.

Meantime, Allison and Kitty, hurrying home with their guest, had delighted Norah by a demand for early supper. She and Barbry were expecting some friends from Rollington, a little Irish village near the Valley, and would be glad to be through with their work an hour earlier than usual.

"And you needn't light up for us down-stairs, except in the dining-room," said Allison, "for we're going straight to our rooms after supper, and we don't want to be disturbed till to-morrow morning."

"Very well, miss," answered Barbry, who, a middle-aged woman, was the most trustworthy of well-trained maids. Mrs. Walton never felt any hesitancy in leaving the children in her care.

"And--oh, Barbry," said Allison, as she turned to leave the room.

"To-night is Hallowe'en, and they say the witches are out and ghosts rise out of their graves. What is that tale they tell about a ghost that used to be seen about the seminary grounds?"

"Sure, an' your mother would be afther gettin' angry if I filled your heads with such nonsense. Who said there was ever a ghost at all in the Valley?"

But after much teasing Barbry allowed herself to be persuaded into telling a tale that had been afloat for years, of the little woman in gray who had once owned the land on which the seminary was built. She lived all alone, and was an odd character. Her peculiar mode of living, and the mystery surrounding her death, gave rise to the rumour that her spirit still haunted the seminary grounds. It was said that the little woman never appeared in public without a gray veil, and her wraith was recognized by the long gauzy covering floating loosely back from its face, not gray but white, as more becoming a spirit.

No sooner had Barbry finished her tale than Allison beckoned the girls to follow, and led the way up-stairs to the sewing-room. "I thought at first I'd just put a pillow-case over my head and wrap up in a sheet, but I'm going to make the girls think I'm the real article. How will this do?"

Taking a roll of cotton from one of the shelves, she pinned it over her hair to make a short white wig, powdered her face till it was as white as the cotton, and over it all threw a long piece of tulle, which she brought from a bureau drawer in her room. "Aunt Elise gave it to me last time I was in town," she said. "She had yards and yards of it that had been used some way in decorating with lilies for a luncheon. Wait till I wrap a sheet around me. Now how do I look?"

"Perfectly awful!" exclaimed Kitty, gazing at her in fascinated wonder that flesh and blood could look so truly ghost-like. Katie hid her eyes with a little scream.

"Don't look at me that way," she begged. "If you are this terrifying in daylight to people who know who you are, what will you be at night?"

Well satisfied with the effect she had produced, Allison folded up the veil, carefully removed the wig, and washed the powder from her face, while Kitty and Katie rummaged in the drawers for some old, long-sleeved gingham ap.r.o.ns that had been discarded long ago. They had decided to go as rag dolls, as that would be the most complete disguise they could think of. Even their hair would be covered, and they would not need to speak.

"It will be terribly hot with all that cotton stuffed about our heads and necks," said Katie. "But we'll look _so_ funny. And we must hold ourselves limp and lean up against things or flop over, just as real rag dolls do."

"Here are the ap.r.o.ns," cried Kitty, at last. "See? They'll fit up close around the neck and hide the place where the muslin that covers our head is tied on."

"I'll paint the faces on you the last thing before we start," said Allison.

"Mercy me! Allison!" exclaimed Katie. "We can't walk down past the depot and the store rigged up that way, even if it is dark. Somebody might think we were escaped freaks, and chase us. We ought to wait till we get to the seminary before we dress."

"No, there won't be time then, and everybody will know it's only a Hallowe'en frolic. If Kitty wears her golf-cape and you wear mine, and pull the hoods away over your faces, n.o.body will notice. I'll not dress till afterward, for I'm not going to appear till the middle of the evening. I'm not going to go up to the gymnasium at all, but just glide around on the outskirts and lay a cold finger on some one now and then.

I'll get a lump of ice out of the cooler if I can manage to slip into the dining-room. Now if you'll bring me the scissors I'll cut the muslin and fit it over your heads."

Mrs. Walton, sorry that her absence would deprive the girls of their antic.i.p.ated Hallowe'en party, compensated for their disappointment as far as possible by ordering an unusually delicious little supper for them and their guest.

"Isn't it too tantalizing!" exclaimed Kitty, when Barbry had left the room for some hot biscuits. "Here's everything I like best, and I'm in such a hurry and so excited that I can hardly choke down a mouthful."

"Don't talk, then," commanded Allison. "Just _eat_!"

The meal proceeded in silence for a few moments, but the silence itself grew funny as they thought of the ludicrous figures they would soon present, and they began to giggle.

The giggles grew into shrieks of laughter a little later, when they had gone up-stairs, and the two rag dolls, all stuffed, painted, and dressed, leaned limply against the wall and leered at each other. Even their hands looked comical, covered in white woollen gloves, each finger held stiffly out from the other. After one glance Allison rolled on the bed, holding her sides, laughing and gasping in turn.

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" she exclaimed, finally, sitting up and wiping her eyes and then going off into a fresh paroxysm of laughter as she looked at them again. "I never saw anything so funny in my life. The girls will simply shriek when they see you."

Norah and Barbry, sitting over their own supper, heard the laughing far down in the kitchen. They looked at each other and smiled, and then, as the contagious sound continued, laughed themselves. The merriment was irresistible. But a little later, busy with their preparations for their coming friends, they did not notice that the house grew strangely still, and that not another sound came from the rooms above all that evening.

Kitty's room adjoined Allison's. Bolting the door which opened into her mother's, on the inside, she pa.s.sed through Allison's with Katie, and out into the hall. Then Allison locked her door on the outside and hid the key under the hall rug. Creeping down the stairs, they stole out at the side door, locked it after them, and hid the key inside a large flower-pot on the porch.

"That's safer than carrying it," said Allison. "We'd be sure to lose it, and then we would be in a pretty pickle."

The moon, overcast by shifting clouds, was just beginning to throw a faint, ghostly glimmer over the Valley as the girls hurried out.

"Let's go back way until we are past grandmother's gate," said Kitty.

Edgewood, Mrs. MacIntyre's place, was just across from The Beeches, and some one was strolling up the avenue toward it. "Uncle Harry," whispered Allison, crouching down in the shadow of a tree until he had gone in.

Rustling along in the dry leaves, they pa.s.sed the rear of the cottage next door, the manse, and the little stone church. That brought them out into the wide, open s.p.a.ce below the ridge, where the lights gleamed from every window in the Soldiers' Home. The girls drew their hoods closer over their faces as they hurried across the churchyard, out through the iron gate into the road.

"It makes me think of the night we had a Hallowe'en party at the haunted house of Hartwell Hollow," said Katie, looking up at the bare branches overhead, which were beginning to toss in the rising wind. Then she clapped a white-gloved hand over her rag mouth to choke back a giggle.

Kitty had begun holding her arms in the aimless fashion peculiar to rag dolls, and was walking along as if she had no bones.

"For goodness' sake, behave yourself," begged Allison. "Don't get us to laughing out here on the road!"

Kitty straightened up as they pa.s.sed the deserted post-office, and they quickened their pace until they were safely beyond the store and the depot. A moment later they had pa.s.sed through the woodland gate of Clovercroft, raced along the path below the ice-house, and were squeezing through the gap in the picket fence to the seminary grounds.

"They must be almost through supper," whispered Katie, peeping in at one of the dining-room windows, over which the blind had not been entirely drawn. "With all that laughing and talking they'll never hear us go up the stairs. We can make as much noise as we please."

A dim light burned in the upper hall, but no lamp was lighted in Betty and Lloyd's room.

"Let's not make any," suggested Allison. "They'll think we haven't come. Let's hide and see what they do when they suddenly discover us."

As she spoke there was a sound of many feet in the lower hall, then on the stairs, and an unusual buzz of voices. The girls were scattering to their rooms to dress for the masquerade.

"Hurry!" gasped Allison, stooping down behind a tall rocking-chair.

Kitty rolled under one bed and Katie under the other, and there they lay waiting, trying to stifle the giggles which nearly choked them.

CHAPTER VII.

THE HALLOWE'EN MASQUERADE

"I'LL make a light," said Betty, groping across the room with a handful of matches which she had taken from the box in the hall. Lloyd started to follow, but, stumbling over a footstool, felt her way to the bed and sat down on the edge of it to wait for a light. On the way up from supper she had started to repeat a funny story which she had heard at Clovercroft that afternoon, and she kept on with it as Betty, having found her way to the table, struck a match. But she stopped again, as the match went out with a sudden puff, as if a strong draught had blown it.

"There! It never fails to do that when I'm in a hurry," exclaimed Betty, striking another match as she spoke. It was extinguished as suddenly as the first. She tried another and another with the same result.

"How strange!" she said, wonderingly. "There isn't a window open anywhere, is there?"

"It's the witches," declared Lloyd, laughing. "There must be one standing there by yoah elbow."

The laugh ended in a piercing shriek as she felt something clutch her ankle. "Murdah! Murdah!" she yelled. "Ow! There's something awful undah the bed! It grabbed me by the foot! Ow! Ow!"

"Hush up, goosey!" commanded a familiar voice, and as Betty struck her fifth and last match, which burned steadily, they saw Allison dashing to the door to lock it. Doors were opening all along the corridors, and footsteps hurrying from every direction in response to Lloyd's terrified cry.