"I'm going to fix a place for you to lie down if we can't raise anybody for a while."
The bundles off, Jannet brushed and wiped with a newspaper, about the woodwork and the mattress which was covered tightly with muslin. Opening the big chest, she spread a sheet widely first, then laid on top a folded comforter. "There isn't the sign of a spring, Nell, but you can pretend that we're camping."
Nell jumped up to help. Jannet spread on more sheets and a light comforter, though Nell protested that it would be too hot. The attic so far had not been too uncomfortably warm, for Jannet had found another opening at the other end, a round, glass window, which had given a circulation of air. But it _was_ clouding up. In a storm they might have to close both openings. Truly this was "the limit," they both concluded. In a storm, who would hear them? Paulina would come home late and go to bed. The "folks" expected to be out late anyway, and if the storm was too bad, who knew when they _would_ get home?
"Well, we'll be missed at breakfast anyway," said Nell. Jannet said nothing. They might be supposed to be over-sleeping. However, she'd get _somebody_ awake in the morning!
It grew darker. Jannet fixed a comforter in the rickety chair for herself and drew it near the bed, for which she had even found a pillow in the chest. With the chair tipped back and her feet on a box, she would be ready to "enjoy the evening," she informed Nell. Neither said a word about a ghost, but Nell sat close to Jannet on the little bed and watched the shadows grow darker and darker till they swallowed up the dim light in the attic. "Don't lose your flashlight, Nell," warned Jannet.
Both were startled a little later by a scurrying sound back under the eaves at a little distance. Jannet flashed her light in that direction, to find a bright-eyed gray squirrel sitting up as squirrels do, most surprised at the light. "Nell!" exclaimed Jannet, "that accounts for some of the noises in the attic, doesn't it? They are not rats, but squirrels."
Jannet had scarcely said this when there was a curious sound again. Something dropped, "tap, tap tap, tap." "A nut falling down some steps! And where are the steps?"
Jannet asked Nell if she had the nerve to go back in the attic with her again, but Nell said that she thought a squirrel had dropped the nut between the rafters or in the wall somewhere. "I heard a few scampering over the roof this afternoon," she added.