“We might as well all stay up now; it will be light pretty soon,” remarked Dick. “And we could never sleep through this storm.”
“Four o’clock,” announced Bill Warner, after looking at his watch.
“What did you fellows hear?” asked Dick.
The two adventurers grinned rather sheepishly.
“Ghosts! I guess the place is haunted after all,” admitted Jack, reluctantly.
“What gets me,” said John, “is this: what explanation are we to make to the girls in the morning?”
“None!” cried Jack. “They’d have the laugh on us! Don’t tell them anything. Tell ’em we never slept better in our lives!”
CHAPTER XIV
MARJORIE’S WARNING
After the boys’ report of their unfruitful night at the tea-house, Marjorie felt less desirous of making the experiment herself. When she had called up the newspapers and explained to them that she now considered herself in possession of conclusive proof against the existence of anything unusual at the tea-house, she found them singularly indifferent. The reporters had been only too ready to print the story Marie Louise had given them over the telephone—that made good copy—but Marjorie’s account of the boys’ experience was too uninteresting and common-place to merit attention. She was disappointed to meet with such apathy; she felt that in failing to get the desired publicity, the boys’ efforts had been partially wasted.
And yet their experiment had not been wholly in vain, for Marjorie somehow felt a subtle change of attitude among the more timid girls, and an increase of courage on Anna’s part. Everything was going better now, for Marie Louise had come back and Mae Van Horn had come down to help during her vacation. Moreover, the girls who had already had vacations—Florence, Alice, and Marie Louise—seemed to work with redoubled energy.