“Why didn’t you tell us?” demanded Doro. The parade had come to a useless halt.
“I don’t know,” murmured Nora. “You know I had queer ideas at first,” she faltered, unconsciously smoothing down the pretty little velvet knickers and slipping a nervous hand into an inadequate pocket.
“We know, but we all have—at first,” admitted Laddie. “I used to think I would love Thistle, and see what she has done to us with her old bossing.” The challenge went unanswered.
“Can’t we go to the bench and talk it over?” suggested Betta, unwilling to leave the scene thus unsatisfied.
“Oh, no, please don’t,” begged Nora. “I don’t know just what I fear, but actually, girls,” she did whisper this, “I am as much afraid of Vita now as I am of the thing up in the attic.”
“Your nice, fat, good natured Vita?” asked Pell in surprise. The person spoken of had gone indoors discreetly.
“I don’t mean that I am afraid of her all the time,” Nora hastened to correct. “She is as good as gold, generally, and I am sure Vita is honorable. But it is that attic affair—she is in some way connected with that, and I am not going to take a chance of getting frightened again tonight. You have no idea how I felt, up there all alone, in fact I was all alone in the house when I heard that groan.”
“Groan?” Wyn could not resist. “I thought it was a moan?”
But no one paid any attention to the remark. Betta suggested they agree with Nora and all go back to camp.
“We can bring Nora back home about the time she expects her Cousin Jerry,” Betta’s suggestion included. “There is no sense in subjecting her to more terror with the Italian woman.”