“Fourteen.”
“Well, that is how old Nell Clyde is. I’m fifteen and Chick is almost sixteen. He’s my friend. Then there’s Tom. He’s pretty nearly seventeen, I guess. He’s a year older than Chick anyway.”
This was fine. Jannet, who knew almost no boys at all, was laughing at the very ordinary nickname. How funny boys were. “What is Chick’s right name?” she asked.
“John. That is one reason why it doesn’t do at all for us to go by our right names. I’m sometimes one thing and sometimes another at school. Chick calls me ‘Hunks,’ for ‘hunks of cheese’.”
“That is funny,” said Jannet. “But tell me, Jan, old P’lina says that my room is haunted, and your mother said that you said so, too, though I imagined that you said it in fun.”
Jan looked at Jannet with a great assumption of seriousness. “Old P’lina is always right, Jannet. This is a ‘haunted house,’ as the natives say. We even have a sort of Dutch Banshee that howls around sometimes.”
“Tell me some more. Do the ghosts walk at night, especially when there is a storm?”
Jan looked curiously at Jannet. “That sounds as if you heard something,” said he. “Yes, somebody comes down some invisible stairs; you can hear slow footsteps, you know. Maybe something drops, but there is nobody there!” Jan made big eyes at Jannet, who grinned delightedly.
“Or you hear low singing, or distant violin music.”
“That would be your radio.”