"Do you want any help?" offered Susan, her head out of the top-floor window.
All these questions came so thick and fast on the heads of Bert and Harry that the boys had no idea of answering them. Certainly the bird was nowhere to be seen, and they did not feel like advertising their "April-fool game" to the whole house, so they decided to crawl into bed again and let others do the same.
The window in the boys' room was a bay, and each time the pecking disturbed them they thought the sound came from a different part of the window. Bert said it was the one at the left, so where the "bird" called from was left a mystery.
But neither boy had time to close his eyes before the noise started up again!
"Well, if that isn't a ghost it certainly is a ban-shee, as Dinah said," whispered Bert. "I'm going out to Uncle William's room and tell him. Maybe he will have better luck than we had," and so saying, Bert crept out into the hall and down two doors to his uncle's room.
Uncle William had also heard the sound.
"Don't make a particle of noise," cautioned the uncle, "and we can go up in the cupola and slide down a post so quietly the bird will not hear us," and as he said this, he, in his bath robe, went cautiously up the attic stairs, out of a small window, and slid down the post before Bert had time to draw his own breath.
But there was no bird to be seen anywhere!
"I heard it this very minute!" declared Harry, from the window.
"It might be bats!" suggested Uncle William. "But listen! I thought I heard the girls laughing," and at that moment an audible titter was making its way out of Nan's room!