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“Humph!” was the ungracious reply. “Well, at least you’ve got your father’s eyes. That’s something to be thankful for, but I’ve no doubt that you look like your mother otherwise.”
There was something about the tone in which this was said that put the girl on the defensive.
“I certainly hope I do look like my darling mother,” she exclaimed, her diffidence vanishing. The elderly woman seemed not to hear.
“Sit down, why don’t you?” she said in a querulous tone. “The train doesn’t go for an hour yet.”
The girl sank into a comfortable chair which faced the one occupied by her aunt; the back of which was toward the door.
For a moment neither spoke, then remembering the coaching she had received, Dories said hesitatingly, “I want to thank you, Aunt Jane, for having invited me to go with you. I am pleased to – ”
A sniff preceded the remark that interrupted: “I know how pleased you are to go with a fussy old woman to a deserted summer resort. About as pleased as a cat is out in the rain.” Then, as though her interest in Dories had ceased, the old woman drew the heavy crêpe veil down over her face, but the girl was sure that she could see the sharp eyes peering through it as though she were intently watching some object over Dori’s shoulder.
The girl had expected her aunt to be queer, but this was far worse than her most dismal anticipations. At last the girl became so nervous that she glanced back of her to see what her aunt could be watching. She saw only the open door that led into the main waiting room of the station. Women were passing in and out, but that was nothing to stare at. Seeming, at last, to recall her companion’s presence, the old woman addressed her: “Dories, you wrote me that you had a girl friend here in Boston who would come down to the train to see you off. Why doesn’t she come?”
“I didn’t have time to let her know, Aunt Jane,” was the dismal reply. “I’m just ever so disappointed.”
The old woman nodded her head toward the door. “Is that her?” she asked. “Is that your friend?”
Dories sprang to her feet and turned. A tall girl, carrying a suitcase, was approaching them. With a cry of mingled amazement and joy, Dories ran toward her and held out both hands. “Why, Nann, darling, it can’t be you.” The newcomer dropped her bag and they flew into each other’s arms. Then, standing back, Dori asked, much mystified, “Why, are you going somewhere Nann?”
It was the old woman who replied grimly: “She is! I invited her to go with us. There now! Don’t try to thank me.” She held up a protesting hand when Dori, flushed and happy, turned toward her. “I did it for myself, I can assure you. I knew having you moping around for a month wouldn’t add any to my pleasure.”
An embarrassing moment was saved by a stentorian voice in the doorway announcing: “All aboard for Siquaw Center and way stations.” A colored porter appeared to carry the bags, and the old woman, leaning heavily on her cane, limped after him, followed by the girls, in whose hearts there were mingled emotions, but joy predominated, for, however terrible Dori’s Great-Aunt Jane might be, at least they were to spend a whole long month together.
CHAPTER IV
SEAWARD BOUND
There were very few people on the seaward-bound train; indeed Miss Jane Moore, Nann and Dories were the only occupants of the chair car. After settling herself comfortably in the chair nearest the front, the old woman, with a sweep of her arm toward the back, said almost petulantly: “Sit as far away from me as you can. I may want to sleep, and I know girls. They chatter, chatter, chatter, titter, titter, titter all about nothing.”
Her companions were glad to obey, and when they were seated at the rear end of the car, they kept their heads close together while they visited that they might not disturb the elderly woman, who, to all appearances, fell at once into a light doze.
As soon as the train was under way, Dories asked: “Now do tell me how this perfectly, unbelievably wonderful thing has happened?”
Nann laughed happily. “Maybe your Great-Aunt Jane is a fairy godmother in disguise,” she whispered. They both glanced at the far corner, but the black veiled figure was much more suggestive of a witch than a good fairy.
“The disguise surely is a complete one,” Dories said with a shudder. “My, it gives me the chilly shivers when I think how I might be going to spend a whole month alone with her. But now tell me, just what did happen?”
“Can’t you guess? You wrote your aunt a letter, didn’t you, telling all about me and even giving the name of the hotel where Dad and I were staying?”
Dories nodded, “Yes, that’s true. Mother wanted me to write to Aunt Jane and I couldn’t think of a thing to tell her about, and so I wrote about you.”
“Well,” Nann continued to enlighten her friend, “she must have written me that very day inviting me to be her guest at Siquaw Point for the month of October, but she asked me not to let you know. I sent the last picture postcard, the one of our hotel, just after I had received her letter, and you can imagine how wild I was to tell you. I hadn’t started going to the Boston High. Dear old Dad said a month later wouldn’t matter, and so here I am.” The girls clasped hands and beamed joyfully at each other.
Dories’ next glance toward the sleeping old woman was one of gratitude. “I’m going to try hard to love her, that is, if she’ll let me.” Then, after a thoughtful moment, Dories continued: “Great-Aunt Jane must have been very different when Dad was a boy, for he cared a lot for her, Mother said.” Then with one of her quick changes she exclaimed in a low voice, “Nann Sibbett, I have lain awake nights dreading the dismal month I was to spend at that forsaken summer resort. I just knew there’d be ghosts in those boarded-up cottages, but now that you’re going to be with me, I almost hope that something exciting will happen.”
“So do I!” Nann agreed.
It was four o’clock when the train, which consisted of an engine, two coaches and a chair-car, stopped in what seemed at first to be but wide stretches of meadows and marsh lands, but, peering ahead, the girls saw a few wooden buildings and a platform. “Siquaw Center!” the brakeman opened a door to announce. Miss Jane Moore sat up so suddenly, and when she threw back her veil she seemed so very wide awake, the girls found themselves wondering if she had really been asleep at all. The brakeman assisted the old woman to alight and placed her bags on the platform, then, hardly pausing, the train again was under way. Meadows and marshes stretched in all directions, but about a mile to the east the girls could see a wide expanse of gray-blue ocean.
“I guess the name means the center of the marshes,” Dori whispered, making a wry face while her aunt was talking to the station-master, a tall, lank, red-whiskered man in blue overalls who did not remove his cap nor stop chewing what seemed to be a rather large quid.
“Yeah!” the girls heard his reply to the woman’s question. “Gib’ll fetch the stage right over. Quare time o’ year for yo’ to be comin’ out, Mis’ Moore, ain’t it? Yeah! I got your letter this here mornin’. The supplies ar’ all ready to tote over to yer cottage.”
The girls were wondering who Gib might be when they heard a rumbling beyond the wooden building and saw a very old stage coach drawn by a rather boney old white horse and driven by a tall, lank, red-headed boy. A small girl, with curls of the same color, sat on the high seat at his side. “Hurry up, thar, you Gib Strait!” the man, who was recognizable as the boy’s father, called to him. “Come tote Mis’ Moore’s luggage.” Then the man sauntered off, having not even glanced in the direction of the two girls, but the rather ungainly boy who was hurrying toward them was looking at them with but slightly concealed curiosity.
Miss Moore greeted him with, “How do you do, Gibralter Strait.” Upon hearing this astonishing name, the two girls found it hard not to laugh, but the lad, evidently understanding, smiled broadly and nodded awkwardly as Miss Moore solemnly proceeded to introduce him.
To cover his embarrassment, the lad hastened to say. “Well, Miss Moore, sort o’ surprisin’ to see yo’ hereabouts this time o’ year. Be yo’ goin’ to the Pint?”
The old woman looked at him scathingly. “Well, Gibralter, where in heaven’s name would I be going? I’m not crazy enough yet to stay long in the Center. Here, you take my bags; the girls can carry their own.”
“Yessum, Miss Moore,” the boy flushed up to the roots of his red hair. He knew that he wasn’t making a very good impression on the young ladies. He glanced at them furtively as they all walked toward the stage; then, when he saw them smiling toward him, not critically but in a most friendly fashion, there was merry response in his warm red-brown eyes. What he said was: “If them bags are too hefty, set ’em down an’ I’ll come back for ’em.”
“O, we can carry them easily,” Nann assured him.
The small girl on the high seat was staring down at them with eyes and mouth open. She had on a nondescript dress which very evidently had been made over from a garment meant for someone older. When the girls glanced up, she smiled down at them, showing an open space where two front teeth were missing.
“What’s your name, little one?” Nann called up to her. The lad was inside the coach helping Miss Moore to settle among her bags.
The child’s grin grew wilder, but she did not reply. Nann turned toward her brother, who was just emerging: “What is your little sister’s name?” she asked.
The boy flushed. Nann and Dori decided that he was easily embarrassed or that he was unused to girls of his own age. But they better understood the flush when they heard the answer: “Her name’s Behring.” Then he hurried on to explain: “I know our names are queer. It was Pa’s notion to give us geography names, being as our last is Strait. That’s why mine’s Gibralter. Yo’ kin laugh if yo’ want to,” he added good-naturedly. “I would if ’twasn’t my name.” Then in a low voice, with a swift glance toward the station, he confided, “I mean to change my name when I come of age. I sure sartin do.”
The girls felt at once that they would like this boy whose sensitive face expressed his every emotion and who had so evident a sense of humor. They were about to climb inside of the coach with Miss Moore when a shrill, querulous voice from a general store across from the station attracted their attention. A tall, angular woman in a skimp calico dress stood there. “Howdy, Miss Moore,” she called, then as though not expecting a reply to her salutation, she continued: “Behring Strait, you come here right this minute and mind the baby. What yo’ gallavantin’ off fer, and me with the supper gettin’ to do?” Nann and Dori glanced at each other merrily, each wondering which strait the baby was named after.
The small girl obeyed quickly. Mrs. Strait impressed the listeners as a woman who demanded instant obedience. As soon as the three passengers were settled inside, the coach started with a lurch. The sandy road wound through the wide, swampy meadows. It was rough and rutty. Miss Moore sat with closed eyes and, as she was wedged in between two heavy bags, she was not jounced about as much as were the girls. They took it good-naturedly, but Dories found it hard to imagine how she could have endured the journey if she had been alone with her queer Aunt Jane. Nann decided that the old woman feined sleep on all occasions to avoid the necessity of talking to them.
At last, even above the rattle of the old coach, could be heard the crashing surf on rocks, and the girls peered eagerly ahead. What they saw was a wide strip of sand and a row of weather-beaten cottages, boarded up, as Dori had prophesied, and beyond them white-crested, huge gray breakers rushing and roaring up on the sand.
The boney white horse came to a sudden stop at the edge of the beach, nor would it attempt to go any farther. The boy leaped over a wheel and threw open the back door. “Guess you’ll have to walk a piece along the beach, Miss Moore. The coach gets stuck so often in the sand ol’ Methuselah ain’t takin’ no chances at tryin’ to haul it out,” he informed the occupants.
The girls were almost surprised to find that the horse hadn’t been named after a strait. Miss Moore threw back her veil and opened her eyes at once. Upon hearing what the boy had to say, she leaned forward to gaze at the largest cottage in the middle of the row. She spoke sharply: “Gibralter, why didn’t your father carry out my orders? I wrote him distinctly to open up the cottage and air it out. Why didn’t he do that when he brought over the supplies, that’s what I’d like to know? I declare to it, even if he is your father, I must say Simon Strait is a most shiftless man.”
The boy said at once, as though in an effort to apologize: “Pa’s been real sick all summer, Miss Moore, and like ’twas he fergot it, but I kin open up easy, if I kin find suthin’ to pry off the boards with. I think likely I’ll find an axe, anyhow, out in the back shed whar I used to chop wood fer you. I’m most sure I will.”
Miss Moore sank back. “Well, hurry up about it, then. I’ll stay in the coach till you get the windows uncovered.” When the boy was gone, the woman turned toward her niece. “Open up that small black bag, Dories; the one near you, and get out the back-door key. There’s a hammer just inside on the kitchen table, if it’s where I left it.” She continued her directions: “Give it to Gibralter and tell him, when he gets the boards off the windows, to carry in some wood and make a fire. A fog is coming in this minute and it’s as wet as rain.”
The key having been found, the girls ran gleefully around the cabin in search of the boy. They found him emerging from a shed carrying a hatchet. He grinned at them as though they were old friends. “Some cheerful place, this!” he commented as he began ripping off the boards from one of the kitchen windows. “You girls must o’ needed sea air a lot to come to this place out o’ season like this with a – a – wall, with a old lady like Miss Moore is.” Dories felt sure that the boy was thinking something quite different, but was not saying it because it was a relative of hers about whom he was talking. What she replied was: “I can’t understand it myself. I mean why Great-Aunt Jane wanted to come to this dismal place after everyone else has gone.”
They were up on the back porch and, as she looked out across the swampy meadows over which a heavy fog was settling, then she continued, more to Nann than to the boy: “I promised Mother I wouldn’t be afraid of ghosts, but honestly I never saw a spookier place.”
The boy had been making so much noise ripping off boards that he had only heard the last two words. “Spooks war yo’ speakin’ of?” he inquired. “Well, I guess yo’ll think thar’s spooks enough along about the middle of the night when the fog horn’s a moanin’ an’ the surf’s a crashin’ out on the pint o’ rocks, an’ what’s more, thar is folks at Siquaw Center as says thar’s a sure enough spook livin’ over in the ruins that used to be ol’ Colonel Wadbury’s place.”
The girls shuddered and Dories cast a “Didn’t I tell you so” glance at her friend, but Nann, less fearful by nature, was interested and curious, and after looking about in vain for the “ruin”, she inquired its whereabouts.
Gibralter enlightened them. “O, ’tisn’t in sight,” he said, “that is, not from here. It’s over beyant the rocky pint. From the highest rock thar you kin see it plain.”
Then as he went on around the cottage taking off boards, the girls followed to hear more of the interesting subject. “Fine house it used to be when my Pa was a kid, but now thar’s nothing but stone walls a standin’. A human bein’ couldn’t live in that ol’ shell, nohow. But – ” the boy could not resist the temptation to elaborate the theme when he saw the wide eyes of his listeners, “’long about midnight folks at the Center do say as how they’ve seen a light movin’ about in the old ruin. Nobody’s dared to go near ’nuf to find out what ’tis. The swamps all about are like quicksand. If you step in ’em, wall, golly gee, it’s good-bye fer yo’. Leastwise that’s what ol’-timers say, an’ so the spook, if thar is one over thar, is safe ’nuf from introosion.”
While the boy had been talking, he had removed all of the wooden blinds, his listeners having followed him about the cabin. Dories had been so interested that she had quite forgotten about the huge key that she had been carrying. “O my!” she exclaimed, suddenly noticing it. “But then you didn’t need the hammer after all. Now I’ll skip around and open the back door, and, Gibralter, will you bring in some wood, Aunt Jane said, to build us a fire?”
While the boy was gone, Nann confided merrily, “There now, Dories Moore, you’ve been wishing for an adventure, and here is one all ready made and waiting. Pray, what could be more thrilling than an old ruin surrounded by an uncrossable swamp and a mysterious light which appears at midnight?”
The boy returned with an armful of logs left over from the supply of a previous summer. “Gib,” Nann addressed him in her friendliest fashion, “may we call you that? Gibralter is so long. I’d like to visit your ruin and inspect the ghost in his lair. Really and truly, isn’t there any way to reach the place?”
The boy looked as though he had a secret which he did not care to reveal. “Well, maybe there is, and maybe there isn’t,” he said uncommittedly. Then, with a brightening expression in his red-brown eyes, “Anyway, I’ll show you the old ruin if yo’ll meet me at sun-up tomorrow mornin’ out at the pint o’ rocks.”
“I’m game,” Nann said gleefully. “It sounds interesting to me all right. How about you, Dori?”
“O, I’m quite willing to see the place from a distance,” the other replied, “but nothing could induce me to go very near it.” Neither of the girls thought of asking the advice of their elderly hostess, who, at that very moment, appeared around a corner of the cabin to inquire why it was taking such an endless time to open up the cottage. Luckily Gib had started a fire in the kitchen stove, which partly mollified the woman’s wrath. After bringing in the bags and supplies, the boy took his departure, and they could hear him whistling as he drove away through the fog.
CHAPTER V
A NEW EXPERIENCE
With the closing in of the fog, twilight settled about the cabin. The old woman, still in her black bonnet with the veil thrown back, drew a wooden armed chair close to the stove and held her hands out toward the warmth. “Open up the box of supplies, Dories,” she commanded, “and get out some candles. Then you can fill a hot-water bottle for me and I’ll go right to bed. No use making a fire in the front room until tomorrow. You girls are to sleep upstairs. You’ll find bedding in a bureau up there. It may be damp, but you’re young. It won’t hurt you any.”
Dories, having opened up the box of supplies, removed each article, placing it on the table. At the very bottom she found a note scribbled on a piece of wrapping paper: “Out of candles. Send some tomorrer.”
Miss Moore sat up ramrod-straight, her sharp gray eyes narrowing angrily. “If that isn’t just like that shiftless, good-for-nothing Simon Strait. How did he suppose we could get on without light? I wish now I had ordered kerosene, but I thought, just at first, that candles would do.” In the dusk Nann had been looking about the kitchen. On a shelf she saw a lantern and two glass lamps. “O, Miss Moore!” she exclaimed, “Don’t you think maybe there might be oil in one of those lamps?”
“No, I don’t,” the old woman replied. “I always had my maid empty them the last thing for fear of fire.” Nann, standing on a chair, had taken down the lantern. Her face brightened. “I hear a swish,” she said hopefully, “and so it must be oil.” With a piece of wrapping paper she wiped off the dust while Dories brought forth a box of matches.
A dim, sputtering light rewarded them. “It won’t last long,” Nann said as she placed the lantern on the table, “So, Miss Moore, if you’ll tell us what to do to make you comfortable, we’ll hurry around and do it.”
“Comfortable? Humph! We won’t any of us be very comfortable with such a wet fog penetrating even into our bones.” The old woman complained so bitterly that Dories found herself wondering why her Great-Aunt Jane had come at all if she had known that she would be uncomfortable. But she had no time to give the matter further thought, for Miss Moore was issuing orders. “Dories, you work that pump-handle over there in the sink. If it needs priming, we won’t get any water tonight. Well, thank goodness, it doesn’t. That’s one thing that went right. Nann, you rinse out the tea kettle, fill it and set it to boil. Now you girls take the lantern and go to my bedroom. It’s just off the big front room, so you can’t miss it; open up the bottom bureau drawer and fetch out my bedding. We’ll hang it over chairs by the stove till the damp gets out of it.”
Nann took the sputtering lantern and, being the fearless one of the two, she led the way into the big front room of the cabin. The furniture could not be seen for the sheetlike coverings. In the dim light the girls could see a few pictures turned face to the wall. “Oh-oo!” Dories shuddered. “It’s clammily damp in here. Think of it, Nann, can you conceive what it would have been like for me if I had come all alone with Aunt Jane? Well, I know just as well as I know anything that I would never have lived through this first night.”
Nann laughed merrily. “O, Dori,” she exclaimed as she held the lantern up, “Do look at this wonderful, huge stone fireplace. I’m sure we’re going to enjoy it here when we get things straightened around and the sun is shining. You see if we don’t.” Nann was opening a door which she believed must lead into Miss Moore’s bedroom, and she was right. The dim, flickering light revealed an old-fashioned hand-turned bed with four high posts. Near was an antique bureau, and Dori quickly opened the bottom drawer and took out the needed bedding. With her arms piled high, she followed the lantern-bearer back to the kitchen. Miss Moore had evidently not moved from her chair by the stove. “Put on another piece of wood, Dori,” she commanded. “Now fetch all the chairs up and spread the bedding on it.”
When this had been done, the teakettle was singing, and Nann said brightly, “What a little optimist a teakettle is! It sings even when things are darkest.”
“You mean when things are hottest,” Dori put in, actually laughing.
The old woman was still giving orders. “The dishes are in that cupboard over the table,” she nodded in that direction. “Fetch out a cup and saucer, Dories, wash them with some hot water and make me a cup of tea. Then, while I drink it, you can both spread up my bed.”
Fifteen minutes later all these things had been accomplished. The old woman acknowledged that she was as comfortable as possible in her warm bed. When they had said good-night, she called, “Dories, I forgot to tell you the stairway to your room leads up from the back porch.” Then she added, as an afterthought, “You girls will want to eat something, but for mercy sake, do close the living-room door so I won’t hear your clatter.”
Nann, whose enjoyment of the situation was real and not feined, placed the sputtering lantern on the kitchen table while Dories softly closed the door as she had been directed. Then they stood and gazed at the supplies still in boxes and bundles on the oilcloth-covered table. “I never was hungrier!” Dories announced. “But there isn’t time to really cook anything before the light will go out. Oh-oo! Think how terrible it would be to have to climb up that cold, wet outside stairway to a room in the loft and get into cold, wet bedding, and all in the dark.”
Nann laughed. “Well, I’ll confess it is rather spooky,” she agreed, “and if I believed in ghosts I might be scared.” Then, as the lantern gave a warning flicker, the older girl suggested: “What say to turning out the light and make more fire in the stove? It really is quite bright over in that corner.”
“I guess it’s the only thing to do,” Dori acknowledged dolefully. “O goodie,” she added more cheerfully as she held up a box of crackers. “These, with butter and some sardines, ought to keep us from starving.”
“Great!” Nann seemed determined to be appreciative. “And for a drink let’s have cambric tea with canned milk and sugar. Now the next thing, where is a can opener?”
She opened a drawer in the kitchen table and squealed exultingly, “Dories Moore, see what I’ve found.” She was holding something up. “It’s a little candle end, but it will be just the thing if we need a light in the night when our oil is gone.”
“Goodness!” Dories shuddered. “I hope we’ll sleep so tight we won’t know it is night until after it’s over.”
Nann had also found a can opener and they were soon hungrily eating the supper Dories had suggested. “I call this a great lark!” the older girl said brightly. They were sitting on straight wooden chairs, drawn close to the bright fire, and their viands were on another chair between them.
“The kitchen is so nice and warm now that I hate plunging out into the fog to go upstairs,” Dori shudderingly remarked. “I presume that is where Aunt Jane’s maid used to sleep. Mumsie said she had one named Maggie who had been with her forever, almost. But she died last June. That must be why Aunt Jane didn’t come here this summer.”
When the girls had eaten all of the sardines and crackers and had been refreshed with cambric tea, they rose and looked at each other almost tragically. Then Nann smiled. “Don’t let’s give ourselves time to think,” she suggested. “Let’s take a box of matches. You get one while I relight the lantern. I have the candle end in my pocket. Now, bolster up your courage and open the door while I shelter our flickering flame from the cold night air that might blow it out.”
Dories had her hand on the knob of the door which led out upon the back porch, but before opening it, she whispered, “Nann, you don’t suppose that ghost over in the ruin ever prowls around anywhere else, do you?”
“Of course not, silly!” Nann’s tone was reassuring. “There isn’t a ghost in the old ruin, or anywhere else for that matter. Now open the door and let’s ascend to our chamber.”
The fog on the back porch was so dense that it was difficult for the girls to find the entrance to their boarded-in stairway. As they started the ascent, Nann in the lead, they were both wondering what they would find when they reached their loft bedroom.
CHAPTER VI
A LIGHT IN THE DARK
The girls cautiously crept up the back stairway which was sheltered from fog and wind only by rough boards between which were often wide cracks. Time and again a puff of air threatened to put out the flickering flame in the lantern. With one hand Nann guarded it, lest it suddenly sputter out and leave them in darkness. There was a closed door at the top of the stairs, and of course, it was locked, but the key was in it.
“Doesn’t that seem sort of queer?” Dories asked as her friend unlocked the door, removed the key and placed it on the inside.
“Well, it does, sort of,” Nann had to acknowledge, “but I’m mighty glad it was there, or how else could we have entered?”
Dories said nothing, but, deep in her heart, she was wishing that she and Nann were safely back in Elmwood, where there were electric lights and other comforts of civilization.
Holding the lantern high, the girls stood in the middle of the loft room and looked around. It was unfinished after the fashion of attics, and though it was quite high at the peak, the sloping roof made a tent-like effect. There were two windows. One opened out toward the rocky point, above which a continuous inward rush of white breakers could be seen, and the other, at the opposite side, opened toward swampy meadows, a mile across which on clear nights could be seen the lights of Siquaw Center.
A big, old-fashioned high posted bed, an equally old-fashioned mahogany bureau and two chairs were all of the furnishings.
They found bedding in the bureau drawers, as Miss Moore had told them. Placing the lantern on the bureau, Nann said: “If we wish to have light on the subject, we’d better make the bed in a hurry. You take that side and I’ll take this, and we’ll have these quilts spread in a twinkling.”
Dories did as she was told and the bed was soon ready for occupancy. Then the girls scrambled out of their dresses, and, just as they leaped in between the quilts, the flame in the lantern sputtered and went out.
Dories clutched her friend fearfully. “Oh, Nann,” she said, “we never looked under the bed nor behind that curtained-off corner. I don’t dare go to sleep unless I know what’s there.”
Her companion laughed. “What do you ’spose is there?” she inquired.
“How can I tell?” Dories retorted. “That’s why I wish we had looked and then I would know.”
Her friend’s voice, merry even in the darkness, was reassuring. “I can tell you just as well as if I had looked,” she announced with confidence. “Back of these curtains, you would find nothing but a row of nails or hooks on which to hang our garments when we unpack our suitcases, and under the bed there is only dust in little rolled-up heaps – like as not. Now, dear, let’s see who can go to sleep first, for you know we have an engagement with our friend, Gibralter Strait, at sunrise tomorrow morning.”
“You say that as though you were pleased with the prospect,” Dories complained.
“Pleased fails to express the joy with which I anticipate the – ” Nann said no more, for Dories had clutched her, whispering excitedly, “Hark! What was that noise? It sounds far off, maybe where the haunted ruin is.”
Nann listened and then calmly replied: “More than likely it’s the fog horn about which Gib told us, and that other noise is the muffled roar of the surf crashing over the rocks out on the point. If there are any more noises that you wish me to explain, please produce them now. If not, I’m going to sleep.”
