“Could it have been distant thunder?” asked Cora, when a minute passed in silence—and a long minute it seemed to the waiting ones.
Belle stepped to the window and looked out and up at the sky.
“The stars are shining,” she said. “If there is a storm it is a distant one, and one that far off wouldn’t sound so near. I don’t believe it was thunder.”
Whatever it was, the sound was not repeated. Together Cora and Belle got a drink in the bath room, and brought one to Bess. Cora called softly to her, but the plump twin had gone to sleep again, without waiting for the water. Cora set it in a chair by the bed and came out of the room as softly as she had gone in.
“No use letting her know about it,” she remarked to Belle. “And we won’t tell anything in the morning, until we hear what the others have to say.”
“All right,” agreed Belle. “I’ll lie with you a while.”
“Yes,” assented Cora. She understood Belle’s feelings.
The two girls talked in whispers, straining their ears for a repetition of the strange noise, but none came, and finally Belle, who was fighting off sleep, announced that she was going to her own room.
Cora and Belle looked significantly at one another across the breakfast table, and Bess remarked:
“Knock what over?” asked Cora, wonderingly.
“The glass of water in the chair by my bed. I didn’t know it was there, and just before daylight I awoke, and as I put my arm out of bed I knocked the glass to the floor. I thought sure you must have heard it.”
“It fell on the rug, but the water splashed in my ties. I’ll have to wear my high shoes until the others dry. Why didn’t you tell me the water was there?”
“You were asleep when I brought it in,” Cora said, “and I felt it was a pity to disturb you.”
“What were you prowling around for?” asked Hazel.
“Oh, just for fun,” Cora said, with another warning look at Belle.
“They didn’t hear anything,” the latter said to Cora when they were alone a little later.
“No, and Mrs. Floyd or her husband didn’t either, for they didn’t say anything.”
“Unless they heard it and don’t want to tell us.”
“Why shouldn’t they tell us?” Cora asked.
“Oh, they might think we’d go away if the queer things begin happening.”
“It wasn’t so very queer—just a noise,” declared Cora.