“Girls! Girls! Come quick and see our ghost before it wakes up!”
The startling summons brought the sleepers to their feet in a twinkling and when Peggy introduced the explanation of the night’s mystery, there was a good deal of shame-faced laughter. Tacitly the girls agreed that the joke would be more enjoyable if its circulation were strictly limited, and even when at the breakfast-table Aunt Abigail remarked that she never saw such air for producing sound sleep, three heavy-eyed girls exchanged glances, and kept their own counsel.
But a little later Dorothy was anxious for enlightenment on a point in natural history. “Aunt Peggy, what makes you call a mousie a goose?”
“Why, I didn’t, dear. A mouse and a goose aren’t the least bit alike.”
“But I heard you say it, Aunt Peggy. When I showed you the mousie, you ran and said, ‘Here’s our goose.’”
As good luck would have it, Ruth and Amy were the only ones to overhear the remark, and Peggy was not called upon to satisfy more than Dorothy’s curiosity.
“That funny little thing that looks like a mouse, Dorothy, except for its horrid black wings, is called a bat. And the goose was only Aunt Peggy.”
“And Ruth, another,” remarked the owner of that name.
“And I was Number Three. Three gooses instead of three graces,” was Amy’s addition, after which the three laughed in the fashion which Dorothy found so mystifying, and consequently objectionable.
That was not the last of the story-telling evenings by any means. Aunt Abigail had abundant opportunity to display her repertoire. She told pathetic stories, which brought the tears to the girls’ eyes, and funny stories, which made them laugh until they cried, and the most thrilling tales of adventure. But she was never called upon to duplicate her early success. In the opinion of her entire audience, apparently, one night of ghost stories was enough for the entire summer.