The next day the girls were awakened by the sun shining in at their open windows; young calves in the near corral were calling to their mothers and the hens in the chicken yard at the back of the house were cheerily clucking as they busily scratched for their breakfast.
This was all so commonplace that the girls arose, laughing as they spoke of their fears of the night before. As soon as their morning meal had been finished, Betsy Clossen wished to visit the scene of her recent adventure, and so all together they entered the dark, silent front room.
There were heavy wooden blinds on all of the windows except the one through which Babs on the night before had seen a dusky face peering.
“Girls,” the little mistress of the Three Cross Ranch exclaimed, “since this is to be my home, I am going to frighten away the ghost by letting in the sunshine. Virg, will you help me unbar these wooden blinds?”
Willing hands assisted and soon the sunshine was flooding in, revealing the wonderful old mahogany furniture. There was dust deep in each of the carvings, while long deserted cobwebs stretched across corners and they, too, were dust laden.
“It is all very fine, I’ve no doubt,” Babs began, as, with arms akimbo she looked about at her new possessions, “but I certainly do wish that the Spanish Don to whom all this grandeur belongs would return and claim it. I’m like Mrs. Hartley, I would just love to have this long, big room furnished in the cozy, comfortable way to which I am accustomed.”
“Well, I certainly would take those paintings down from the wall,” Margaret declared with a shudder. “I would rather have any number of ghosts than those foreign folks watching every move I made. Honest Injun, they give me the chilly shivers staring at one the way they do.”
Virginia laughed. “Where’s Betsy Clossen?” she suddenly inquired.
While the other girls had been busy removing the wooden blinds, that maiden had been experimenting with her “elevator” chair. As Virg spoke, the girls heard a gay shout and turned in time to see Betsy’s head disappearing below the floor. They ran in that direction and reached the spot just as the trap-door closed and snapped into place.
Babs shook her finger at the spot as she declared: “Mysterious chair, this is the very last day that you will operate. I’m going to make this wonderful long room livable and I surely don’t want chairs that will carry some unsuspecting guest down to the cellar.”