This was the morning after the ghost party, and while Betty was thus delivering herself to Cathalina, the other girls having scattered, Molly, the colored maid, came in to clean the room. “Does you-all care foh these masks?” she asked, as she held up one from the waste basket which she was about to empty. “Ef yo’ doesn’t, I’ll tek it along to Snowla; she’ll like to play with it.”
“Why, certainly, Molly,” returned Cathalina, “I threw it there.”
“Well, ah didn’t know. Ah picked one up off’n the flo’ in Miss Holley’s room this mawnin’ an’ she jus’ nachelly snatched it out’n ma han’, an’ tol’ me nevah to put anything in the waste basket without askin’.”
Betty and Cathalina exchanged glances as they left the room to Molly’s care. And as they went down stairs they fell in with Victoria, who asked, “What were you girls saying last night to make Louise Holley so mad at you? I met her coming in the side door with a red face and saying, ‘Smarties! I’ll get even with them!’ I said, ‘What’s the matter, Louise?’ and she said, ‘O, nothing,—that Betty!’”
“She had not been with us, and Betty did not say anything that I know of.”
“I saw you all together afterwards and I thought maybe she had been with you.” Victoria went off in another direction as they all reached the foot of the steps outside.
“There! She was listening and thought you said that about her instead of Hilary.”
“Seems to me Isabel said something, too. Why I wasn’t even there till afterwards! But the girls told me what had been said and about the sneeze they heard.”
“Probably she made up her mind to get into the party someway, and when she saw you there after the girls had gone took that chance to fool you.”
“O, there is Miss West!” interrupted Betty. “Let’s ask her to take a row with us.”