“Why, I’m hungry, I believe. We had some cookies and fudge and lemonade last night but that isn’t very staying.”
“Haven’t you had any breakfast? Believe me, I never forget my meals. Come with me, child. If Daphne doesn’t fill you up with griddle-cakes, then my name is Mike!”
Laughing, but not so sorry for the stout young arm that led her along, Jannet willingly made the descent to the kitchen, where kind old Daphne fussed over her and stirred up a fresh supply of batter for her cakes. Jan, quite at home with the cook, made some cocoa, which might have been better had he followed Daphne’s directions; but the result was hot and stimulating at least. “Now you go and lie down somewhere, honey, and git some sleep,” said Daphne, who had heard what she was not supposed to hear from Hepsy, who at last understood the visit to her room in the “dead of night.”
Jannet needed no coaxing to take the advice thus offered. Well fortified and comfortable after her hot cakes, cocoa and real maple syrup, she was escorted to the library by Jan and tucked on the davenport there with a light cover suitable to the warm day. Jan thought that she would sleep better there than in her own room, all things considered, but Jannet knew that she could sleep anywhere. Jan drew the curtain with its fringes before the alcove in which the davenport stood. From little windows the soft breeze came in gently. Jannet never knew when Jan went away, so quickly did she sink into slumber.
It must have been in the late afternoon when she wakened. She had not known when Cousin Di and Jan came and looked at her, and debated whether to waken her for dinner or not, nor when Uncle Pieter came and looked down upon her with a smile. “Poor little Jannetje Jan,” he said, pulling the curtains together and going back to his desk to wait for some one.
It was when conversation was going on between her uncle and some one else that she wakened. “You can wait outside, Herman,” she heard her uncle say. “It will be better for Vittoria to talk to me alone, and I can assure you that she will receive every courtesy.”
Jannet felt very uncomfortable, though at first still drowsy. But after all, she was the one who made the first discovery. It was not eavesdropping, she hoped, and she could not help it, anyway. She almost drowsed off to sleep again in the first few minutes, while Vittoria was answering Mr. Van Meter’s questions about where she had been. Vittoria was decidedly sulky and did not want to answer any questions. Finally Mr. Van Meter told her that perfect frankness was her only course. “So far as I know, you have done no real harm in playing the ghost, but we want to know why you did it, and of course we want no more of it. It was most dangerous for the girls to be locked in and frightened.”
“You don’t intend to send me away, then, till I get married?”
“Not as long as you make no trouble for us. And we want no gossip about this, either, for our own sakes and that of you and Herman.”
This seemed to relieve Vittoria, who began to talk. “I did it first to get even with Paulina who scared me once. I told her that I did not believe in the family ghosts. She did, but since nothing happened, she made something happen and I caught her at it, hiding in the attic where I had my box with my savings in it. She was more scared than I was, for she really believes in ghosts.