"Sh!" whispered Betty, warningly, with a backward glance over her shoulder. The girl behind the door had stepped out on the landing for a better view, but she darted back to her hiding-place as Betty turned, and their eyes met.
"She looks like a gypsy," thought Betty, noticing her straight black hair hanging around her eyes. "And she seems ready to dodge at a word."
"She tells us ghost stories every night after supper," exclaimed Davy. They had reached the gable room, and, while Betty hung up her hat and unlocked her trunk, he curled himself up comfortably on the foot of her bed. "She can make you shiver no matter how hot a night it is."
Betty scarcely noticed what the boy was saying. At any other time she would have been surprised at his talking so much. Just now she was looking around her with a feeling of strangeness. Everything seemed so much smaller than when she had left the place. Her room had not seemed bare and cheerless before she went away, because she had seen no better. But now, remembering the pretty room that had been hers in the House Beautiful, the tears came into her eyes. For a moment the contrast made her homesick. Instead of the crystal candlesticks, here was a battered tin one. Here were no filmy curtains at the windows, no white fur rugs on a dark polished floor. Only a breadth of faded rag carpet, spread down on bare unpainted boards. Here was no white toilet-table with furnishings of gold and ivory; no polished mirror in which she could see herself from head to foot. She looked mournfully into the tiny looking-glass that was so small that she could see only one-half of her face at a time. Then from force of habit she stood on tiptoe to see the other half. The mouth was not smiling as it used to in the old days.
She was recalled from her homesick reverie by Davy's voice again.
"Molly didn't want you and that other girl to come here," he confided. "She said you'd be snobs; that all rich people were. Bradley asked Molly what a snob was, and said if it was anything bad that she shouldn't call you that, 'cause you wasn't one, and always tied his fingers up when he cut hisself, and helped him with his mul'plication tables and everything. And Molly said she'd call you what she pleased, and treat you just as mean as you deserved, and if we dared say a word she'd shut the first one that tried it up in the smoke-house in the dark; then she'd say abra-ca-dab-ra over us."
Davy's voice sank to a frightened whisper as he rolled the dread word over his tongue in unconscious imitation of Molly. He was quivering with excitement, and his cheeks were unusually red. He had talked more in the few minutes than he often did in days.
"Why, Davy, what's the matter?" cried Betty. "What do you mean by abracadabra?"
"Hush! Don't say it so loud," he begged earnestly. "It's Molly's hoodoo word. Bradley says she can conjure you with it, same as coloured folks when they put a rabbit's foot on you. I had to tell, 'cause I'm afraid Molly's going to do something mean to you."