“That’s all right,” put in Celia Prime. “But there really is a ghost connected with the old Robinson house.”
“There always is,” laughed Laura.
“Mary will tell you about it,” said the senior, gravely. “You have been brought here for that purpose, you candidates. Wait until after supper.”
“Oh!” squealed one of the Lockwood twins. “A real ghost story?”
“Just as real as any ghost story possibly can be,” said Mary O’Rourke, laughing. “Gather around the fire, you infants. Never mind the smoke—it will keep away the mosquitoes. Here come Jennie and Belle with the milk, and we can make the chocolate. The table is spread—and we’ve got to hurry so as to get our share away from the black ants.”
“Oh—o! Don’t!” begged somebody. “Don’t remind us of them. I feel them crawling all over me now!”
“To say nothing of the spiders,” laughed the wicked Mary.
“Oo—h! That’s the only trouble with picnics. Somebody ought to go ahead and sweep off the grass,” declared Dorothy Lockwood.
“That would surely be ‘adorning nature’—‘painting the lily’—and all that,” laughed Mary.
The shadows were creeping up from the valley. The electric lights flashed out all over the city and made a brilliant spectacle below them. The night wind rustled the trees and the whip-poor-will began his complaint from his pitch upon a dead branch.