“Oh, please don’t, Frisky, please don’t!” she moaned. “I want to scream so, and I know I mustn’t. You look terrible in that white dress. Take down your hands, please, Frisky, please! I know it’s you, so why do you go on pretending? I never meant to tell Betty about your having the candle-shade. You said you’d forgive me. But you said you forgave Shirley, and then you frightened her so that she’ll never get over it. Oh, I mustn’t scream or they’ll find you out! Please, please go away, Frisky, and don’t try to frighten me any more.”
The tears were streaming down the Smallest Sister’s face, and she seemed to be in mortal terror. Betty went to her and shook her softly awake, soothing her with pet names and caresses. And then, between sobs, the whole story came out.
“Oh, Betty, you must never, never tell, but Frisky was the ghost! I made her mad at me because I said she oughtn’t to have taken a candle-shade from the Tally-ho the night you asked us two to dinner. I saw it in her drawer the other day, and I said she ought to give it right back. And then she told me I was a meddlesome little thing. But when I most cried she said she’d make up and forgive me. But last night when my two roommates were away, there was a knocking near the chimney and a moan, and a ghost came right out of the wall, just as Shirley said, with its hands up to its face, and it was Frisky in a white sheet.”
“Well, then you needn’t have been scared any more,” said Betty soothingly.
“A person in a white sheet is rather scaring,” declared Dorothy, “especially if you’re awfully scared to begin with. She glided around and around, and she wouldn’t speak to me when I whispered to her that I knew her. So then I shivered and shook till morning. She might have scared me just as she did Shirley—she couldn’t tell. Shirley will stutter and her eyes will twitch always, the doctor says. But Frisky called me her funny little chum to-day, and just laughed when I accused her of being the ghost. And I can’t quarrel without telling why, and if I tell, something perfectly dreadful will happen to Frisky.”
“She well deserves it for frightening and tyrannizing over you little girls,” said Betty severely.
“Oh, Betty, you mustn’t tell! You promised not to. Only always let me come and stay with you when my roommates are away.”
“You certainly shall,” Betty promised, “and do hurry and get ready for college, Dottie. Boarding-school girls are such complete sillies!”
CHAPTER XVIII
FRISKY FENTON’S FOLLY
Mr. Thayer’s May party was to be a Doll Festival. Georgia had thought of it, and she and Fluffy Dutton had made sure that the college was “properly excited” over its “features.”