"Oh, but, Billie dear, you're ever so much braver than we are," said Violet cajolingly. "Don't you remember how you've said right along that you weren't afraid of ghosts?"
"Well, I'm not," said Billie stoutly, while her eyes searched the far corners of the room which were beginning to get very indistinct and creepy in the flickering uncertain light of the fast shortening candles. "And, anyway," she added, the thought seeming to comfort her, "I locked the door."
"Well, don't you know a ghost can walk right through a door?" asked
Laura, and Violet bounced in the bed and came down with a thud.
"Stop it," she commanded. "I'm trying my hardest to get to sleep before those candles burn out. When it gets pitch dark in here I never can."
"And all this comes under the head of pleasure," murmured Laura with a little chuckle.
"All right—we'll keep still," agreed Billie. "I think myself that the best thing we can do is get to sleep. Night, girls. We'll all feel better in the morning."
"If we're here to feel anything," added Violet gloomily.
For a long time the girls lay wide-eyed and quiet, but gradually the law of nature asserted itself. Their eyelids drooped, and the deep regular breathing showed that they were asleep.
It was about three o'clock in the morning that it happened. Tortured by dreams in which she was being chased by a ghost in goggles and a green motor car, Violet finally awoke and lay staring out at the dark.
Then suddenly she sat up. Her dream had followed her into the world of reality. There was the same strange, weird purring noise that sounded like, yet was strangely unlike, the chugging of a motor car.