"What's that?" they heard Chick say, and presently a low grunt answered him. The bed creaked and the girls flew upstairs as fast as they could, Nell retrieving her pin first.
"Well," said Jannet, as they entered the room again, "shall we wake up Paulina and get things stirred up? You will be afraid to go to sleep again, won't you?"
"I g-guess not," shivered Nell. "Put down the windows and leave the light on."
"Look under the bed, then. I refuse to get into it unless that is done." Nell tried to be jolly with poor success.
"Perhaps that is where--It--was. Say, that was a funny feeling, Nell, to jerk that coverlid and find it come just too easy!"
As before, Jannet went all over to see what she could see. There was no sign of any one's having been in the closets or in the bath room. The vines on the porch looked undisturbed. Jannet put the windows down to a point where they would have to be raised to admit anyone. Again she went over the paneled wall to see if there were a hidden door between her room and the next one. "But that light was too near the big chimney," she said. "Perhaps there might be an opening of some sort there."
The girls looked up into the chimney with its bricks discolored by many a fire. "What's on the other side of the chimney?" Nell asked.
"That other room just like this,--are you afraid to go in there?"
"No," answered Nell, beginning to get over her scare. But they found the door of the other room locked and looked at each other as much as to say, "Perhaps the mystery lies here."
"Nothing hurt us anyhow, Nell, as I thought before. We'll leave the side lights on and put that little screen I have up on a chair to keep the light out of our eyes. I haven't heard another sound, have you?"
"No, I guess the ghosts have gotten through. What time is it, Jannet?"
Jannet looked at her wrist watch but it had stopped. "The ghosts were too much for my timepiece, Nell, but it must be 'most morning. It is about the same time, I think, that the comforter went off my bed and never did come back. I've always wanted to ask Paulina about it, but someway, she is so sure about ghosts that I hated to stir her up, or draw any questions. I declare, Nell, I'm different here. _It's_ so different!"