But no romantic thing occurred as the butler, still retaining his sphinx-like mask, ushered them into a little reception room opening from the hall fitted up to simulate a Chinese pagoda. The girls seated themselves on two teakwood chairs and stared silently at the many curios that gleamed from cabinet and screen, each betraying some eccentric custom of the land of the yellow peril.
“O dear, I feel as if I were a beggar!” observed Grace with an apprehensive shiver. “Ugh, I should hate to have that grim-looking man come back and tell me my company wasn’t wanted.”
Nathalie burst into a giggle, which was quickly suppressed in sympathetic recognition of her companion’s mood. Her eye was caught by a huge mandarin who grinned at her with a hideous leer, and she shivered, half wondering if some of the many evil spirits believed to inhabit China were not hidden behind his wrinkled brown skin, and were looking at her through his bead-like eyes, trying to hypnotize her with his sinister glare. Surely those glittering, shiny specks of eyes did move—oh, what was that? She jumped to her feet, crouching all of a heap in abject fear as she stared with horror-stricken eyes at the mandarin, as if that weird, shrill scream that had suddenly broken the grim silence had come from his mummy-like lips.
“Oh, what is it?” whispered Grace in a hoarse whisper, as she stared in paralyzed appeal at Nathalie.
Before Nathalie could answer another cry, more piercing and, if could be, more blood-curdling than the first, came echoing down the hall, followed by a demoniacal laugh which assured Nathalie that the terror was something more human than an old Chinese idol. Grace, with a frantic scream of terror that almost equaled in its intensity the one that they had heard sprang into the hall and rushed frenziedly toward the door!
Nathalie stood a moment in indecision, utterly at a loss to determine whence came the horrible shrieks, but in another instant, as another one rent the air with the same frenzied note of merriment, she hesitated no longer. As fast as her fear-tied feet would allow her, she flew into the hall, through the door that Grace had flung wide open, and with terror-winged feet and thumping heart rushed pell-mell down the wide steps and along the path after Grace!
CHAPTER VI—WORKING INTO HARNESS
A half-hour later the two girls stood on Mrs. Morrow’s veranda, and with Fred’s mocking laughter still ringing in their ears told of their hasty exit from the gray house. With shame-mantled face and downcast eyes Grace handed Mrs. Morrow her note.
In answer to that lady’s surprised inquiries the story was told at length, a few extra flourishes unconsciously added to plead for the unexpected finale to their errand. But Mrs. Morrow was most kind, not at all like Fred, and did not laugh at them for being “scare-babies” as he had expressed it. She voiced her sympathy most generously, saying she did not wonder they were frightened, as she was sure at their age she would have done the same.
“I cannot imagine what it could have been,” she pondered, in much perplexity. “I will ask the doctor. If he does not know he will probably hear about it, if it was really anything serious.”