It was some minutes before there was any reply.
A sad-faced girl in an old-fashioned purple calico dress finally opened the door and stared at them with big gray eyes. The length of her dress, the way her blond hair was pulled back and pinned into a tight knot, made her seem much older than her visitors.
A suggestion of a smile crossed her face at the sight of the girls’ pleasant faces, and for a second she looked almost pretty.
“Is this your kitten?” asked Mary Louise. “We rescued it from a tree down the road.”
The girl nodded.
“Yes. It belongs to my aunt Mattie. Come in, and I’ll call her.”
The girls stepped into the dark square hall and looked about them. The inside of the house was even more forbidding than the outside. The ceilings were high and the wall paper dark. All the shutters were drawn, as if there were poison in the June sunlight. For no reason at all that they could see, the old stairs suddenly creaked.
Jane shuddered visibly, and the girl in the purple dress smiled.
“Don’t mind the queer noises,” she said. “Nothing ever happens in daytime.”
“Then something does happen after dark?” questioned Mary Louise eagerly.