“What do you mean, Burd?” Sally Moon demanded from the other end of the table.
“There is nobody missing,” explained Burd. So——”
Just then little Henrietta offered her contribution to the discussion. She gulped her first mouthful of sandwich and declared hoarsely:
“Snakes!”
“O-o!” shrieked several of the girls.
“Snakes, indeed!” gasped Belle Ringold. “You horrid little thing! How would snakes come to be upstairs in this house?”
“They was here,” said Henrietta with confidence, looking at Jessie and Amy. “You ’member ’em, don’t you, Miss Jessie? They was Carter’s ha’nt, wasn’t they?”
“There used to be a ghost here, everybody said,” called out some one in the crowd. “Do you suppose it is a ghost up there?”
Just then the scratching on the floor was repeated. Something not at all ghostly, it seemed, was moving about in the garret of the old house.