“O, don’t!” cried Betty. “I’m so ashamed of it!”
“‘Ashamed of it!’” exclaimed Donald. “Why, girls always try all sorts of things on Hallow-e’en, don’t they?”
“O, yes, but I didn’t dream that anybody’d be there, and of course I don’t believe in that silly old superstition!”
“No, I never supposed you did, but I couldn’t resist stepping up any more than if I’d been hypnotized. I don’t know but I was! But you haven’t any idea of how much I have been thinking of you, and wanting to apologize, and wanting to meet you. I was pretty sure that it was you when I first saw you this afternoon, and after watching you closely while you were skating so near me, I knew it was the pansy girl.” Donald almost said “my” pansy girl, but bethought himself in time. “Now do you think you can forgive me?”
“O, yes,” said the generous Betty. “I, too, have been wondering who it was, and I was so terribly afraid it was Captain Holley, for I heard that he was over that night. I’m really thankful that it was you and that you do not think me too silly.”
“I never thought for a minute that you were ‘silly,’” declared Donald. “But why did you think it might be Captain Holley?”
“Because I’ve had the oddest experiences. I believe I’ll tell you about it. Do you boys think that he is all right?”
“We don’t know what to think about him.”
“Well, neither do I, and I can’t imagine what he was doing at the cave. But if I tell you, you must promise not to tell. It would be too bad to make trouble for him when perhaps he is all right.”
Donald was all attention, though not inclined to be very easy on Captain Holley, for did he not have an eye tonight on the little pansy lady whom Donald already was beginning to consider his “girl.” They were skating again, and Donald tightened his hold on Betty, as she told him of the first time she met the brother of Louise and how it happened that she was there. “You can see why I thought it might be he again,” she said, “and I didn’t have anything but a blurred image of you in the glass.”