But triumphantly right through the shrill notes of their eager queries rang the weird and displeasing sound that had so disturbed them.
“Ha-HA! Ho-HO! He-HEE! Haw-HAW!”
“It’s too much!” averred the girl who had spoken first. “Where is that sound being made? And what is it? Seems to me as if it were from Suite 22—do you think somebody is torturing those freshmen?” It was just what everybody did think, but they dreaded the admission. “Let’s go in there,” the girl continued, “and—and find out.” She ended rather weakly, shrinking before the task of investigating so unearthly a sound as that.
The girls were flocking forth, some still in their damp slickers, the rain glistening on them; others all immaculate just as they were ready to start out to recitations: and still a lazy third contingent, who had not yet had any classes or who were wantonly cutting them, as sweet as flowers in Japanese silk kimonos and little pattering slippers.
Together they made the charge on Door 22.
Crowding in at the breach as it swung open, they gasped in sudden bewilderment at the sight that met their eyes.
Standing rigidly side by side like two soldiers on parade, but with their hands solemnly placed upon their diaphragms while they emitted simultaneously the weird noises that had alarmed the house, were Peggy Parsons and Katherine Foster, the idols of Ambler House!
Their eyes widened at the wholesale intrusion and their hands fell limply to their sides, and then, as the indignant chorus broke out around them, they looked at each other in crimson confusion and burst out laughing.
“Why—c-could you h-h-hear us, g-girls?” cried Katherine incoherently through her shaking spasms of mirth.
“Hear you?” echoed Hazel Pilcher, who had led the charge upon them. “Hear? Well, my dears, did you think you were exactly whispering? I never listened to so awful a concert in my life. It’s a wonder I didn’t call the house-matron. Oh, you incorrigible youngsters, what in the world was it?”