It was dusk, not dark, but the light of the big camp fire made convenient shadows to screen the entrance of the guests.
It seemed a weird sight to Dolly as she somewhat timidly made her way in. Twenty or thirty white-robed figures were bowing and scraping or dancing wildly about or talking to each other in high squeaky voices and short sentences.
"Know me?" somebody said, stopping in front of Dolly.
The voice seemed a little familiar, and yet Dolly couldn't quite place it. It might be Jack Norris, or it might be one of the Holmes boys. But in a spirit of fun she nodded her head affirmatively, with great vigour, as if to declare that she knew the speaker perfectly well, but she would not speak herself.
"Who?" squeaked the high voice, hoping Dolly would speak and thus reveal her own identity.
But Dolly was too canny for this. Instead she joined together her thumb and forefinger of each hand and held them up to her eyes, making circles like eye-glass rims. Now, in sunny weather, Guy Holmes wore big glasses with shell rims, and as this described him fairly well, it was a stroke of triumph on Dolly's part. For it was Guy Holmes himself, and he doubled up with laughter at the clever identification.
But he shook his head as if Dolly were greatly mistaken in her guess, and so she didn't know whether she had been right or not.
When all had arrived, they danced in a circle round the fire, chanting wild sounds that had no meaning or rhythm but were supposed to be ghostlike wails and groans.
Then a game was played, under the direction of Mr. Holmes, by which it was endeavoured to learn who the different phantoms were.
Their host led them to what was really the drying-ground for the family laundry. A clothesline stretched on four posts formed a square, and from the clothesline depended brown paper bags of varying sizes, from large to tiny, each held by a slender string.