“Yes, I guess Jack could run over during his noon hour, if I phoned him. But tell me, Marie Louise, how much of this does Anna know?”
“Not a single word of it! We knew that you would be anxious to keep it from her, so we didn’t say a thing about the ghost story. Of course she knows the little dog is dead.”
“Naturally,” observed Marjorie.
Sleep was out of the question now, so, after persuading Marie Louise to return to her work at the tea-house, Marjorie thoughtfully began to dress. She did not for one moment share the other girl’s fears in regard to the little creature’s death, but she could not help wondering at the coincidence. It was too bad, she thought, that it had to happen, for it would make Lily and Marie Louise and all of the timid girls more timid. She longed to make some experiment, to prove to them that there was nothing to it, and yet she did not know what to do. For obvious other reasons it would not be safe for her to stay there alone all night—in a house so near a public highway, where automobiles passed by with such frequency. And yet she knew of no other way to prove the harmlessness of the place to the girls.
At the end of that day—a day more successful in every way than the preceding one,—she talked the matter over with John Hadley, and decided to do nothing at all. He was naturally of the same opinion as she was, that the thing was merely one of those strange coincidences which so often occur, and did not consider it worth any notice. The affair would blow over more quickly, he said, if ignored; in the busy days that the girls had before them, they would not have time to worry over such silly matters. And so the thing was dropped—for the time being.
By the time that two weeks had passed, each day bringing more and more patrons to the tea-house, and thus demanding more work from the girls, most of them had forgotten the little incident of the dog’s death, and the stories which were associated with the place. On one occasion, several of the girls drove there with John Hadley after dark, but they found the house exactly like other houses, and laughed at their former superstitions. Had it not been for Anna, who came to Marjorie one day with a request, the matter might have been dropped for the rest of the summer.
It was one morning in the first week of July that Marjorie, coming to the tea-house early, found the girl busily mixing one of those maple cakes for which they had already become famous. She looked up smilingly as she saw Marjorie enter the kitchen alone.
“Good morning, Miss Wilkinson,” she said, cheerily. “I am glad to see you by yourself, because I want to ask you a favor. Could our crowd of girls have the loan of this house next Saturday night for a party for our friends? Of course we’d clean up afterwards, and not disturb anything.”
Marjorie hesitated a moment, in doubt as to the right thing to do. It was not that she did not want Anna to use the house—there was no reason in the world why her faithful service should not be rewarded—but she wondered whether an evening affair of this sort would look well for the tea-house. People were so critical; they might not believe that the party was an innocent one.
“Would you have a chaperone or two, Anna?” she asked.