“It’s gone!” she cried. “The card is gone!”
Mabel peered over her friend’s shoulder at the empty shelf, but presently she looked down to spy something lying on the floor. She swooped down upon it and held a scrap of paper high over her head. “Look! Look!” she exclaimed. “It blew down when we opened the cupboard.”
They raced to the nearest window, the better to see what was written. Mabel read aloud:
“Greetings to thee, ghost, or shall we say ghostess? For I much suspect thee to be the latter, and not a disembodied spirit, elusive though thou art. Wilt thou not materialize and appear in the flesh to
“R. M.”
“Isn’t it perfectly lovely?” cried Ellen excitedly. “Do let’s answer it. Of course we must not divulge our identity, but we can answer. O dear! I haven’t a bit of paper, though I do happen to have a pencil.”
“Let’s look around; perhaps we can find something that will do.”
“Good idea.”
Mabel began her search, looking in every room, but for some reason every scrap of paper had been disposed of in some way. “Used to kindle a fire,” Ellen surmised. “I’ll look around out of doors.”
She went out, but rollicking winds had borne away anything like paper, supposing any had ever lodged there. But presently a brilliant idea struck her as she caught sight of a couple of logs lying in an outhouse, too heavy, perhaps, to be confiscated by any boys who might have played there. From one of these logs Ellen stripped a piece of birch bark, the inner side of which was smooth and clean. She bore it indoors in triumph. “See what I found,” she said as she extended her prize. “We can write on it as the Indians do.”