They planned an excursion for the next day, to include a stop at the hotel to ask about dance privileges, and then, this having been arranged for, good nights were said.
Cora, whose room adjoined that of Belle, was awakened some time in the night by a touch on her arm.
“Yes! What is it?” she asked, sitting up quickly, and reaching for the little electric flashlight she always had under her pillow. “Oh, it’s you,” and she revealed Belle’s face. “What’s the matter—are you ill?”
“No, but listen! Did you hear that—that noise?”
CHAPTER XIV—WAS IT THUNDER?
The silence of Cora’s room, into which Belle had tiptoed, was broken only by the accentuated breathing of the two girls.
“I don’t hear anything,” began Cora. “Are you sure——”
“Listen!” interrupted her chum. “Did you hear it then?”
For a moment Cora was not aware of anything, and then there seemed gradually to come to her a dull, scraping sound. Perhaps it would be more correct to call it a vibration. If you have ever tried to raise a window which fits loosely in the frame sidewise, as compared to the other direction, and have felt it go up in a series of vibrations, you will understand what is meant. The whole room seemed to tremble like the shaking of the window.
The whole bungalow, too, seemed to be vibrating and delicately trembling from some cause—a deep, low and hardly audible sound that was, in effect, more sensation than noise.