“There is Phrosy, hat on and bag in hand,” said Nell, pointing to the door of the lodge. “We surely are being deserted wholesale this morning.”
Jessie tried to plead with the black woman, but found her obdurate. Phrosy would like to accommodate Miss Jessie, she “sho would, but she wouldn’t take a chance of hearin’ dose ghosts again, no, suh, not fo’ nobody.”
Finally all that was left to them was to bid her good-bye and God-speed, which they did with a sigh. Burd and Fol volunteered to see her safe aboard the boat, and so the three girls were left alone.
They sat down on a pile of stones near the lodge and stared gloomily out toward the lake. Presently Amy giggled.
“As we look now we would make a perfectly stunning group, entitled ‘Gloom,’” she said. “Snap out of it, girls. Somebody say something cheerful.”
“I don’t feel like it,” confessed Jessie, adding, crossly: “I think Darry is horrid to act the way he does.”
“He is a pest,” assented Amy, immediately. “The question is, what are we going to do about it?”
“I’ll tell you,” said Nell, and they looked at her hopefully. “What do you say, we get Fol to drive us into Gibbonsville and find out what Darry is up to?”
Amy clapped her hands and applauded the idea, but Jessie looked doubtful.
“Wouldn’t that be spying?” she asked, but Amy caught her up quickly.