And the qualifying: “An’ if a’ tales be true, that’s no lie!” could not resolve into thin air the spectres before her.
Twenty pairs of eyes could testify to them, seesawing up and down in silvery balances of moonbeams—now one, now another tipping the scale.
And the small hour was very, very still. Not a sound troubled it, but the hollow clanking of that distant chain—picked up by ears near the ground, and ... rising sounds of hysteria among the girls.
Even the Guardian felt as if some insulation were stripped from her nerves. Each one sent a separate, tingling shock through her body.
But she got to her knees and then to her feet—the dark poncho clinging to her.
“Girls! this can be explained. This must be explained. If we don’t explain it.... Who’ll come—with—me?”
There was a groveling and grubbing among the ponchos.
“Let’s—go!” said a small voice then—the very small voice of Pemrose Lorry, “I’d like to tell Daddy how a ghost tips the scale; I suppose they weigh about as much as two pin-heads—or the dust off a feather,” speculated the laboratory sprite.
“No-o, you stay here, Theresa,” returned the Guardian to another volunteer. “You stay with the younger girls. We three will investigate this.”
For now it was “Copper-nob” who, loosing the inner fire with a timid: “Let’s go!” was tiptoeing in the Guardian’s wake along a plaided path of moonbeams.