“She isn’t so good,” laughed Kathryn after she and Betty left the tent, “but she was jolly all right. If it is a dark woman, it can’t be you, Betty, so we’ll remain friends, I see.”
“I suppose there’s some arrangements for the mirror stunt,” said Betty. “Oh, there’s the music—let’s see where it is. Why, Gypsy, Marcella has a real orchestra—or a number of the pieces anyhow. Listen! They’re tuning up!”
The fun of the old-fashioned dances began. The Pirate of Penzance made straight for Betty, who wondered more than ever who he could be. He was evidently speaking in his natural voice, but she had never heard it before, at least it was not at all familiar. Marcella must know him very well, Betty thought, for she noticed a private confab between the two.
Her pirate was very graceful, she thought, and his costume, with its dark red and dark blue, and gay sash with its array of knives, was a good one. The knives he laid aside for the dances, but assumed them again when it was announced that the company would now proceed to the basement where witches and goblins were holding their annual frolic. “Be very careful,” announced the Pirate of Penzance, “and the witches will be friendly.”
Down the stairs to the large basement with its concrete floor, tripped the company. Except for the part devoted to the furnaces, the place was decorated and the only light came from large pumpkins, amusingly cut and containing the customary candles. A hollow-voiced witch in a long black robe stood at the door and odd little goblins and black cats and other appropriate Hallowe’en figures hung from the low ceiling of the cellars.
Betty had not seen the place to bob for apples, mentioned by the girl of the receiving line, but here she found it, and groups of boys and girls separated to perform the various Hallowe’en stunts provided. The Pirate of Penzance had held Betty’s arm coming down stairs, but now, with the girl she thought was Marcella—indeed it must be—he was guiding this one or that one and helping to start the fun. Could it be Ted Dorrance? He was tall enough, but no; he was good-looking but his chin was different and his mouth firmer some way; and if it were Ted, he had stained his skin darker, that was all.
But Betty had little time to think. She was doing things with the rest, with boys and girls whose identity she did not know. Neither Kathryn nor Carolyn were in sight, though the light was dim enough in this spooky place, and they might be around.
And now her turn came to go into the “hole in the wall,” a jog of some sort in the solid masonry, before which a black curtain fell. By the light from a widely grinning pumpkin Betty read the charm which was supposed to keep her from baleful influences:
“O Witches and Goblins, by this little light,
Please send me the face of my true love tonight!”
“Say it out loud,” prompted a voice behind Betty. The black witch stood there.