After the refreshment the boys were restless. It was not far from bedtime and Jan suggested that Chick go with him to the attic den to see his latest invention.
"You might invite us, too, Jan," said Jannet, with a freedom which she was beginning to feel in this new environment.
"Oh, girls wouldn't understand, and besides, it doesn't work yet. I want to get Chick's ideas about it. Then the attic is where the ghost usually begins, you know."
"Honestly, Jan, did you ever hear or see anything strange?"
Jan looked mysterious, then laughed. "'Honestly,' Jannet, I think most of the noises might be from some ordinary cause. But once I did--oh, well, there are lots of odd sounds and things in an old house. But no ghost has ever come into my attic den so far as I know."
"I wouldn't go up there after dark for worlds!" Nell declared.
"Silly!" So her brother commented. "Jan's den is a real room, at a gable, and used to be a bedroom, Paulina says. There's a rambling sort of hall, and a door, that Paulina keeps locked, into the rest of the attic, which isn't all floored, she says. Paulina says 'Keep Out,' in large letters, doesn't she, Jan?"
"Yep," answered Jan, with a look at Chick which was intended to mystify the girls.
"Maybe P'lina is the ghost, then," Nell suggested, and Jannet thought to herself that it was not impossible.
"I'll tell P'lina that I want to see if any of my mother's boxes or trunks are up there, and perhaps she will give me the key!"
"_Much_ you would," and Jan's disbelieving eyes laughed into Jannet's sparkling ones. "Wait till I come home again anyhow," he added.
"Perhaps I will, Jan," his cousin conceded.
The boys said goodnight, leaving the two girls in the quaint old kitchen, where they had made taffy in one of the old kettles, by the express permission of Mrs. Holt, and under her supervision, for Paulina had not wanted to have the "trouble and muss" of a fire here, among the cherished antiques of the kitchen. "Before the weather gets too hot," meditatively said Jannet, taking a last piece of the sticky but very delicious sweet from one of the pans, "I'd like to have an old-fashioned taffy pull and invite some of the girls and boys that I met at your house, Nell. I'm afraid that Uncle Pieter and Old P'lina might not like it, but perhaps Cousin Di could get permission for me."