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Page 52
They were all sitting on the vine-covered porch, looking out between the
tall white pillars into the sultry June darkness. The light from the
hall lamp streamed across the steps where the four Bobs rolled and
tumbled around over each other, but except for that one broad path of
light they could see nothing. There was not even starlight.
"How hot and still it is," said Mrs. Sherman. "There doesn't seem to be
a leaf stirring, and there's not a star in sight. I think it will surely
storm before morning."
"Betty," said Joyce, "your 'shadowy queen who rules the realms of shade'
has forgotten to put on her crown. Now if I could write poetry like some
people I know, I would write an ode to Night and compare it to a stack
of black cats. It wouldn't sound so pretty as your description, but it
would be nearer the truth."
"Well, cats or queens, it doesn't make any difference what you call
it," said the Little Colonel, "it's the stupidest night I evah saw. I
wish something would happen. It seems ages since we have done anything
lively. Now that we are ovah the measles it's wastin' time to be sittin'
heah so poky and stupid. What can we do, mothah?"
"Let's tell ghost stories," said Mrs. Sherman, who knew what was going
to happen in a short time, and wanted to keep the girls occupied until
then. "I know a fine one," she began, sinking her voice to a creepy
undertone that made the girls cast uneasy glances behind them. "It's all
about a haunted house that has clanking chains in the cellar, and
muffled footsteps, and icy fingers that c-lutch you by the throat on the
stairs as the clock tolls the midnight hour."
"Ugh! How good and spooky!" said Joyce, with a little shiver. "I love
that kind."
They drew their chairs around Mrs. Sherman to listen, so interested in
the story that two of the Bobs rolled over each other and off the high
porch, and nobody noticed their whining. Presently, in the most
thrilling part of her story, Mrs. Sherman paused and pointed
impressively down the avenue.
"Oo-oo-oo! what is it? Ghosts?" shrieked the Little Colonel, her teeth
chattering, and in such haste to throw herself into her mother's arms
that her chair turned over with a bang.
"It is a pillow-case party," answered Mrs. Sherman, laughing, "but it is
certainly the most ghostly-looking affair that I ever saw."
Down the long avenue toward them came a wavering line of white-sheeted,
masked figures. They had square heads, and great round holes for eyes,
and the candle that each one carried flashed across a hideous grinning
face, whose mouth and nose had been drawn with burnt cork. The leader of
this strange procession was a veritable giant,--the Goliath of all the
ghosts,--for he loomed up above them to nearly twice the height of the
tallest one in the line. It took two sheets to cover him; one flapped
about his long thin legs, and one swung from his shoulders, swaying from
side to side as he moved noiselessly along with gigantic strides.
"Oh, mothah, it's awful!" whispered the Little Colonel, clinging around
Mrs. Sherman's neck.
"It is almost enough to frighten one," she replied. "But they are all
friends of yours, Lloyd. For instance, the giant is nobody but your good
friend and playfellow, Robby Moore, on stilts; and somewhere in that
bunch of little tots at the tail end of the procession are those funny
little Cassidy twins, Bethel and Ethel. They begged so hard to be
allowed to come that their mother at last consented, although they are
only six years old. She said she would dress up in a sheet and
pillow-case herself, and come with them, to see that nothing happened to
them, so I suppose she is somewhere in the line. I was told that
everybody in the neighbourhood was coming; old people as well as
children, but I'll leave you to find out for yourself, as the fun of a
party like this is in the guessing. They will unmask before they go
home."
The procession glided on in silence until it reached the house, and then
ranged itself in a long line in front of the group on the porch.
"There are thirty-eight," whispered Joyce. "I counted them. Isn't that
one at the end funny? That one in a bolster-case tied at the top, and
his hands sticking out of the slits at the sides, like fishes' fins. I'm
almost sure that it is Keith. I could tell if I could only see his
hands, but he has white stockings drawn over them."
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