“The thing up in the attic is a secret,” persisted Nora, although she feared her voice might disturb the others now.
“That thing big Cap. He always at night sniff so much,” said Vita. “Now, I go to bed,” she spoke this very emphatically. “I go to bed and you go to sleep.”
“All right, go,” ordered Nora. “And don’t you dare go up in that attic again tonight. I was just having the most——”
But her audience had vanished and the house was empty, so to speak, so why orate or harangue?
All sleep and its delightful attributes had flown. Nora was so wide awake she felt she would never sleep again, and worse still, she was angry. What did that old Vita mean by her attic tricks? If it were she who was up there why did she moan? And if it were something else why did the woman try to conceal it?
“Now, I have a Scout duty,” Nora promised herself. “I must fathom that mystery and protect Cousin Theodora and Cousin Gerald from that unscrupulous woman.” Visions of crimes hidden in the attic, memory of her own incarceration there when the trap door, as she now regarded the door with the spring lock snapped shut, filtered through her excited brain, and when she remembered how she had almost died up there, and how it might have been years before her skeleton would have been discovered, just as so many others had fared on secret attic trips, it did seem to Nora that she should arise at once and immediately start her investigations. Humor and tragedy hopelessly mixed.
“But it’s so late,” she figured out, “and would it be fair to wake Cousin Ted when she is so tired and after her taking me to that beautiful picture?”
Convincing herself that this was why she did not immediately begin her brave Scout work, she once more attempted to quiet her nerves by thinking of all the sheep Miss Baily had recommended to skip over fences and lull one to sleep.
But sleep was far out of the reach of frisky sheep, and Nora lay there thinking of so many things, her head threatened to ache and a miserable day promised to dawn upon her if she did not soon succumb.
“Perhaps I wronged poor Vita. There may not have been anything wicked in the attic after all,” she soothed herself. “Why couldn’t she go up there if she wanted to? And maybe she stubbed her toe.”