“Oh, how I wish we could,” Nann, the fearless, replied, “but we have duties to attend to first. Come back in about an hour and maybe we’ll be ready to go.”
“All right-ho!” the sea breeze brought to them, then the lad turned into the rising wind, pulled in the sheet and scudded away from the shore.
“That surely looks like jolly sport,” Nann declared as, with arms locked, the two girls stood on a boulder, watching for a moment. Then, “We ought to go in, for Great-Aunt Jane may have awakened,” Dories said.
When the girls tiptoed to the chamber on the lower floor, they found Miss Moore unusually fretful. “What a noisy night it was,” she declared, peevishly. “I came to this place for a complete rest and I just couldn’t sleep a wink. I don’t see why you girls have to walk around in the night. Don’t you know that you are right over my head and every noise you make sounds as though it were right in this very room?”
“I’m sorry you were disturbed, Aunt Jane,” Dories said, but she was indeed puzzled. Neither she nor Nann had awakened from the hour that they retired until sunrise.
When the girls were in the kitchen preparing breakfast, Dories asked, “Nann, do you think that Great-Aunt Jane may be—I don’t like to say it, but you know how elderly people do, sometimes, wander mentally.”
“No, dear,” the other replied, “I do not think that is true of your aunt.” Then chancing to put her hand in the pocket of her sweater-coat, and feeling there the crumpled paper, Nann drew it out and handed it to Dories.
“Why, where did you find it?” that astonished maiden inquired when she had read the finely written words, “In twelve days you shall know all.”
“Under my pillow,” was the reply, “and so you see who ever leaves these messages has no desire to harm us, hence there is no reason for us to be afraid. At first I thought that I would not tell you, but I want you to understand that your Great Aunt Jane may have heard footsteps over her head last night, even though we did not awaken.”
“Well, if you are not afraid, I’ll try not to be,” Dories assured her friend, but in her heart she knew that she would be glad indeed when the twelve days were over.