“You’re never going up in that garret in a storm?” demanded the widow, with a strange look on her face.
“Why not?” asked Agnes, eagerly.
“What do you want to bother with it for?” the good lady asked Ruth without making Agnes any reply.
“So we can play there on just such days as this,” said Ruth, firmly. “It will make a splendid playroom.”
“Well! I wouldn’t do it for a farm,” declared Mrs. McCall, and at once went out of the room, so that the girls could not ask further questions. Agnes whispered to Ruth:
“She knows about the ghost, all right!”
“Don’t be so silly,” the older girl said. But her own heart throbbed tumultuously as she led the procession up the garret stairs a little later. They could hear the wind whistling around the house up here. A shutter rattled, and then the wind gurgled deep in the throat of one of the unused chimneys.
“Goodness!” gasped Tess. “How many strange voices the storm has, hasn’t it? Say, Dot! do you s’pose we’ll find that goat of yours up here now?”
“I don’t care,” said the littler girl. “Aggie and Ruth were talking about something that sounded like ‘goat’ that night in bed. And they won’t tell now what it was.”
“You must never play eavesdropper,” said Ruth, seriously. “It is very unlady-like.”