Rosie shook her head. “No, no, no,” she maintained, “I’m not going to tell you what I saw until you’ve been down yourself.”
It was Arthur’s turn next. They listened again. The same thing happened—awkward stumbling down the stairs, a pause, then a roar of laughter.
“Oh what did you see?” they implored when he reappeared.
“Try it yourself!” he advised. “I’m not going to tell.”
Dicky went next. Again they all listened and to the same mysterious doings. Dicky came back smiling but, like the others, he refused to describe his experiences.
Now it was Maida’s turn. She took the candle and the mirror from Dicky and plunged into the shivery darkness of the stairs. It was doubly difficult for her to go down backwards because of her lameness. But she finally arrived at the bottom and stood there expectantly. It seemed a long time before anything happened. Suddenly, she felt something stir back of her. A lighted jack-o’-lantern came from between the folds of a curtain which hung from the ceiling. It grinned over her shoulder at her face in the mirror.
Maida burst into a shriek of laughter and scrambled upstairs. “I’m going to marry a jack-o’-lantern,” she said. “My name’s going to be Mrs. Jack Pumpkin.”
“I’m going to marry Laura’s sailor-doll,” Rosie confessed. “My name is Mrs. Yankee Doodle.”
“I’m going to marry Laura’s big doll, Queenie,” Arthur admitted.
“And I’m going to marry Harold’s Teddy-bear,” Dicky said.