“Then folks shouldn’t whisper,” declared Dot, quickly. “Nobody would ever try to listen, if folks spoke right out loud. You say, yourself, Ruth, that it’s not polite to whisper.”
They opened the garret door and peered in. Although it was so dull a day outside, there was plenty of light up here. The rain beat against some of the windows and the wind shook and rattled the sashes.
Ruth’s gaze turned instantly upon the window at which she believed she had seen the moving figure from across Willow Street. There was nothing hanging near that window that could possibly have shown from without.
She forced herself to go directly to the place. It was at the right of one of the huge chimneys and she could make no mistake, she thought, for it was at the window to the right of this chimney that she had seen the specter appear not two hours before!
A large space about this window was cleared. There was nothing near enough the window that could have represented the garret ghost. But this cleared space before the window seemed to have been made especially for the ghostly capers of the “haunt.”
Agnes came gingerly over to where Ruth stood. She whispered in the older girl’s ear:
“S’pose that old ghost should appear, Ruth? What would you do? You know, Eva said it was seen only on stormy days.”
“Don’t be silly, child,” said Ruth, quite angrily. She was angry as much at herself for “feeling so shaky inside,” as she was at Agnes.
She bustled about then, and hurried her sisters, too. They made a good beginning within the next two hours. Of course, it was only a beginning. Dust and cobwebs lay thick over all. They could brush up only the worst of the litter.
“Next clear day,” Ruth declared, “we’ll take all these old clothes down and hang what we want to keep on the lines in the yard. Uncle Rufus can have the rest. Why do you suppose Uncle Peter kept this old stuff?”