"Well, I guessed nearly everybody the first half-hour, except those ridiculous rag dolls. Does anybody know where they have gone?"
That started the discussion the two under the table had been waiting for, and the various guesses, falling wide of the mark, were so amusing that their mirth nearly betrayed their hiding-place. Once they thought their discovery was certain. They had been feeding themselves from the store of provisions in their aprons as well as the size of their muslin mouths would allow. The mouths had been only small slits at first, but they had stretched and torn them with their fingers until they were large enough to allow them to take a good-sized bite of apple. As they sat there, munching nuts and pop-corn, Kitty whispered, "We're like the man in the verse:
"'There was a young man so benighted,
He never knew when he was slighted.
He went to a party,
And ate just as hearty
As if he'd been really invited.'"
Katie tried hard not to laugh, but the effort ended in a snort, and she almost choked on a grain of pop-corn. If some one had not upset a jack-o'-lantern just then and started a wild scramble to put out the candle before it burned the cloth, the unbidden guests must certainly have been discovered.
Gradually the crowd around the table dwindled away, as little groups gathered in different parts of the room, intent on various ways of fortune-telling. Having eaten all they could, and not being able to hear anything more of interest, the girls under the table began to grow tired of their position. Moreover, the heat of their costumes seemed to grow more unbearable every minute.
"We're in a trap," groaned Katie. "How we are ever going to make our escape is—"
Kitty never heard the rest of the sentence, for half a dozen girls, who had ventured down the cellar steps with candle and looking-glass, came bursting into the room almost hysterical with fright. Breathless from their headlong race up three flights of stairs, they gasped out their news in broken sentences, each voice in a different key.
"Oh, a real ghost! None of your sheet and pillow-case affairs!"
"White hair and a face like marble and a long floating veil!"
"And it clutched Mary Phillips with fingers that were like the dead! Didn't it, Mary?"