The prediction proved a true one, for, after carefully closing the case, the child switched off the light.
Scarcely realizing what they were doing, the girls lingered by the door. Then suddenly Lucile realized their position. “She’ll be here in a second,” she whispered.
They turned, but not quickly enough, for of a sudden a glare of light from a powerful electric flashlight blinded them while a masculine voice with a distinctly youthful ring to it demanded:
“Who’s there?”
To their consternation, the girls felt the child bump into them as she backed away and there they all stood framed in a circle of light.
The glaring light with darkness behind it made it impossible for them to see the new arrival but Lucile knew instantly from the voice that it was the millionaire’s son.
For a full moment no one spoke. The tick-tock of a prodigious clock in one corner of the room sounded out like the ringing of a curfew.
“Oh! I see,” came at last in youthful tones from the corner; “just some girls. And pretty ones, too, I’ll be bound. Came to borrow a book, did you? Who let you in, I wonder. But never mind. Suppose you’re here for a week-end at one of the cottages and needed some reading matter. Rather unconventional way of getting it, but it’s all right. Just drop it in the mail box at the gate when you’re done with it.”
The girls suddenly became conscious of the fact that the child was doing her best to push them out of the door.
Yielding to her backward shoves, they sank away into the shadows and, scarcely believing their senses, found themselves apparently quite free to go their way.