"They heard Cecily's light footsteps"
Next day they jointly wrote a long letter,—telling all about themselves, their homes, their schools, their studies, and any other items they thought might interest her,—fastened it to the end of the string, and dropped it into the dark garden after nightfall. Later they heard Cecily's light footsteps in the gloom below, and when they pulled up the string just before they went to bed, the note was gone.
"Well, she's evidently decided that it would be all right for her to take it," said Janet; "and I'm relieved, even if she doesn't answer. I can see why she mightn't think it right to do that. And now we must plan to send her something besides, every once in a while. I should think she'd just die of lonesomeness in that old place, and with hardly a thing to do, either!"
That night they sent her down a little box of fudge that they had made in the afternoon, and the next night a book that had captivated them both. And when they pulled up the string the evening after, there was the book again, and in it a tiny note, which ran:
Dear Girls: You are too, too good to me. I ought not to be writing this. It is wrong, I fear, but I just cannot sleep until I have thanked you for the sweets, and this beautiful book. I read it all, to-day. You are making me very happy. I love you both.
Cecily.
Meantime, they had seen Miss Benedict go in and out once or twice, limping slightly, and had watched her veiled figure with absorbed interest.
"Who could possibly imagine her as beautiful!" they marveled. And truly, it was an effort of imagination to connect beauty with the queer, oddly arrayed little figure.