Evangeline ran out to the car to kiss Laura good-night, and the latter promised that she would ride over soon and see the farmer’s daughter again. But Otto took the boys aside and assured them, with much emphasis, that the Robinson house was actually haunted, and that he wouldn’t go into it alone, at night or by day, for his father’s whole farm!
“But how did you get nailed to the floor, Laura?” demanded Jess, in the tonneau beside her chum, and when the car was speeding back to town.
“Why! foolish little me did that herself, of course,” laughed Laura. “That’s what I did when I drove the first nail. Then, when you all ran, squealing, and I tried to do the same, the nail held me and pulled me back. I thought something had grabbed me by the skirt—I really did!” and she laughed again.
But Laura was silent about the rest of her adventure—and none of her young companions chanced to ask her why she had not screamed for help. She hid the veil and determined to wait and watch, hoping to get some clue to the owner of the article. She was sure that the figure she had seen for a moment, and which had, of course, bound her wrists and gagged her with the veil, was one of the girls—somebody who bore her a grudge.
“And who that can be, I don’t know—for sure,” thought Laura, after she was in bed that night and the throbbing of her ankle and the fever in it kept her awake. “But somebody must really hate me—and hate me hard!—to have played such a trick on me.”
It was not that Laura was entirely unsuspicious; but she did not voice the vague thought that ever and anon came to her mind regarding the identity of the person who had so treated her. She did not believe it was any trick that the members of the M. O. R. were cognizant of; but to make sure she went to Mary O’Rourke that very Monday and asked her point-blank.
Mary had no knowledge of the affair. She deeply regretted that such a misfortune should have overtaken the candidate.
“No more haunted houses for us!” declared the senior. “We’ll hold the initiation in the clubhouse—and it will be a tame one, I guess. The girls were all pretty well scared. Of course, we shouldn’t have been frightened—especially we older ones; but we were, and that’s all there is about it.”
But the joke on the M. O. R.’s went the rounds of the school. Jess could not keep still about it, and all the members of the secret society were “ragged”—especially by the boys—over being scared by two farmers with a lantern hunting for a strayed cow!
Chet took his sister to and from school for a couple of days in the car and she walked as little as possible meantime; so that the ankle soon recovered its strength. The basket-ball match, which was to come off on the court belonging to East High, was the main topic of conversation among the girls of Central High all that week.