But they didn’t.
“Behold the ghost of Lenox
hall!”
Dozia insisted on carrying the “tin rompers”
down stairs in her hands and donning them in a convenient
place to avoid possible disaster.
“Yours are shorter and jauntier than mine, Jane,”
she argued. “Besides, you have a better
figure for tonlets. Come along, I’ll stop
at the landing and buckle into the things. Give
me a couple of chains. Don’t they chime
beautifully?”
“Wait a minute,” Jane ordered. “I
just discovered the usual slip of paper.”
She was extracting it from an armlet. “It’s
quite new and very modern, in fact regular typewriting
kind—”
“Oh, tuck it away and come along,” Dozia
moaned. “I hear the horde howling and the
sooner I get this stuff off the better I’ll feel.
Pickles! but it’s heavy.”
Jane folded the slip of paper and made it secure some
place, then they proceeded to forge their way into
the recreation room on the second floor, whither the
students had been hastily summoned by the matron.
“Now I know how the baby tanks felt in the big
war,” panted Jane, who was valiantly leading
the way. “I mean those big human machines
that rolled over the earth and ploughed things down,
as they went.”
“Say, Janie, just wait a minute,” begged
Dozia at the first landing. “This looks
a little like a joke but who is the joker? Who
got up in that place and rattled these nightly?
Also, who let out that wild scream we heard on that
first night?” She was talking quickly and in
a subdued voice. “We may be breaking the
spell by raiding the secret chamber, but suppose the
old spook breaks out in a new spot?”
“I’ve thought of all that,” confessed
Jane, her smile threatening to unhinge the visor.
“But we must give the youngsters their show
first. The details will be lost in their joy of
rescue.”
“They come! They come!” called out
Miss Gifford in an uncertain treble. She had
been waiting to give this signal.
“Land, I’m losing the panties,”
groaned Dozia, trying to hold up the tonlets with
one hand while she made wild grabs all over the outfit
with the other. Dozia’s artistic effect
was surely in jeopardy. Majestically the two
big, black walnut doors swung back, and the crusaders
passed between them.
“Behold the ghosts of Lenox Hall!” cried
out Jane tragically.
“Behold, behold!” echoed Dozia, raising
her arm in its chained gusset and attempting to salute
at the peak of her helmet.
Shouts from the girls spoiled further efforts at the
theatrical, and presently it was no longer a question
of holding the old armor in place, but rather that
of getting out of it safely, for what those freshmen
didn’t say and do to those ghosts!
“Nothing but strung up dishrags,” sneered
Maud Leslie. “They must have looted every
hardware store in town for these. Look!”
