“I know—looks like a ventilator,” interrupted Jim again.
“But when I came to the flight of stairs, I didn’t see them,” Betty took up her story, “and I wasn’t expecting stairs, so I fell most of the way down and landed with one foot under me. I was frightened and the pain made me faint. I called once, but nobody answered. I felt as if I was in an old dungeon, like those we saw in France, and if I moved or called rats would come and bite me, or I should drop into a well and drown. Besides, I hadn’t the least idea how to get back. Of course it was perfectly silly. I called once more after a long while, and once I thought I heard some one scream. And then, ages after, there were knocks and I knocked back. That’s all. Did some one really scream or did I imagine that?”
“I did. I thought it was a ghost,” explained Helen.
Betty laughed. “I’m pursued by ghosts these days. The Morton Hall girls hear them, and Dorothy and poor little Shirley Ware—why, I wonder if there could be a secret passageway at Miss Dick’s! It’s an old, rambling sort of house. I must ask about it when I go back.”
But by the time Betty had spent a week on a couch at Babe’s, recovering from her sprained ankle, her mind was so full of more important things which must be attended to “at once if not sooner,” to quote Emily’s delightful formula, that she quite forgot to inquire of Miss Dick about the secret passage. It was better, too, perhaps, to let sleeping dogs lie. Shirley was back at school again, and her wan little face must be a sad reminder to any big girl who had played a practical joke on her. Miss Dick still felt sure that there had been no joke—that Shirley had conjured up a ghost out of her own imagination. It would be a bad plan, possibly, to stir the matter up again.
CHAPTER XVI
THE MYSTERY DEEPENS
At least once every week Betty dropped into Mrs. Post’s room to talk over the progress of their charges and the state of the house in general.
“The Goop is as bad as ever,” Betty complained one windy afternoon in March. “I’ve just been up in her room—she’s begun again throwing whatever she doesn’t need at the moment under her bed, and whenever she’s in a hurry or especially happy at meal times she shovels things in with her knife. Do you think she ought to be allowed to stay here another year?”
“Maybe she’ll decide to stop studying and teach for a while,” suggested the optimistic Mrs. Post. “She’s thinking of it. But if it’s important for her to learn tidiness and table manners—which it certainly is—she certainly is more likely to do it here than anywhere else, with me nagging at her and you looking sweet and sorry. Now I’ll warrant she’s down on her knees this very minute clearing up her floor, because you saw it looking disorderly. She thinks a lot of pleasing you. And the other girls don’t mind her habits much; she’s good for them as a horrible example.”
“The Twin Digs have been reported again for lights after ten,” said Betty, who was in a downhearted mood.