Nan Sherwood at Lakeview Hall Part 26

cried another girl.

"Maybe that black dog has been in the pantry," chuckled Bess.

"No laughing matter," Laura said. "Look quick, Nancy, dear."

Nan entered in the lead. She flashed her spot light about the big room.

There was the row of ice-cream tubs. One of them had its cover off and some of the ice was scattered on the floor. On the other side of the room were the hampers. The covers had been wrenched off two of them and a raid made upon the food they contained.

"Who's been ahead of us?" cried Nan.

"Goodness--gracious--Agnes!" murmured Amelia Boggs.

"Oh! don't tell me you've been robbed!" was the horrified cry of the red-haired girl.

Nan paid little attention to the rifled ice-cream container. She hurried to the hampers. One had been filled with individual salads, each in its paper box. The other had held chicken and anchovy sandwiches.

Several salad containers lay empty on the floor and more had disappeared entirely--been carried away by the thief, or thieves. At least a couple of dozen sandwiches must have been abstracted.

"Goodness!" wailed Bess, right at her chum's shoulder. "What an appet.i.te!"

"For a ghost, I--should--say!" agreed May Winslow.

But Nan did not feel that the occasion was at all funny. This was downright thievery. And she felt quite sure that she knew who had done it.

"That mean, _mean_ Linda Riggs!" whispered Nan to Bess.

"Do you really think so?" breathed her chum.

"Who else could it be?" returned Nan, with an emphatic nod. But that was all she said at the time. She hurried to light the big lamp and make the girls welcome. At least the discovered raid on the viands served to banish all fear of the boathouse ghost. Ghosts certainly do not have an appet.i.te for chocolate ice-cream, tuna-fish salad, and chicken sandwiches.

"Start the fire--_do_, Amelia," begged Nan. "Set the plates and knives and forks, Bess. Make yourselves at home, girls. Don't be afraid of starving, Laura. There's _loads_ to eat left."

"My mind is relieved by that a.s.surance," said the red-haired girl with a sigh.

Nan had seen to it that each window was curtained and every crevice stopped, so that no light could shine out and play traitor. But the fact that the store of food had been raided disturbed her mind not a little.

If Linda Riggs and her chums (for of course the conceited, self-a.s.sertive girl did not make the raid alone), played one mean trick, they might another. They might report to some teacher or to Mrs. Cupp, what was going on in the boathouse.

Nan began to realize now that this banquet giving was rather a risky thing. The girls all did it, and it was considered a forgivable offence against Dr. Prescott's rules; but of course the princ.i.p.al desired that the rule against eating after hours should be obeyed, or else she would not have made the regulation.

Nan was rather sorry she had yielded to Bess Harley's suggestion and arranged this banquet. But now being given over heart and hand to the affair, Nan did all she could to make the entertainment a success.

At this distance from the Hall the girls felt free to let their tongues run, and to laugh and chatter to their hearts' content.

"Oh!" cried May Winslow, "this party is lots nicer than any we ever had in our rooms, for here we do not have to set a watch for Mrs. Cupp, or be so careful how we breathe."

"Only we should set a sentinel on guard against ghosts, May," suggested Laura, wickedly. "That should be your job, honey."

"How mean of you!" squealed May. "I had all but forgotten that horrid black thing we saw."

"It is the ghost of some poor old slave your grandfather owned, Winslow," said one girl. "That is, if it really is a black ghost."

"He wouldn't haunt _me_," returned May, who was from Alabama. "I'm not afraid of any negro, alive or dead! Grandfather Mullin was awfully kind to all his people, and they all loved him. They didn't feel themselves slaves. Our own forefathers were held in bondage by the lords and barons over in England, four or five hundred years ago."

"Oh, say! don't start anything like that here," begged Amelia. "We get enough history I should hope, from Mr. Bonner."

"Right-oh!" yawned Laura, lazily. "Let good fellowship flow with that cocoa that already smells so good; and as we set to work upon the more stable viands----"

"Here! Hold on!" cried Bess. "What are 'stable viands'? Oats and corn.

One would think we were horses."

Just then Nan made the announcement: "Ladies, supper is served." And at that very moment, as the girls crowded to the table and Amelia began to pour the steaming drink, there came a resounding knock upon the door.

"The ghost!" gasped a number of the girls in awed chorus.

"If it is," said Nan Sherwood, vigorously, as the summons was repeated, "he is in full possession of his health and strength."

"It's something worse than a ghost," agreed Laura Polk, grabbing several sandwiches and enveloping them in the folds of her sweater. "But I vow I shall not be cheated out of all my supper."

CHAPTER XXI

"THE BLACK DOG"

n.o.body started for the door for fully a minute, and within that time the knocking was repeated three times. It was not only an imperious rapping; it was plainly inspired by some excitement.

"My goodness!" Amelia Boggs murmured. "That ghost's in an awful hurry."

"He's hungry, maybe," giggled one girl.

"He can't be, if he ate all that he stole before we got here," Bess declared.

Only Nan was silent. She suspected at once what the commanding summons meant. It was a teacher, perhaps Dr. Prescott herself. The party was a failure and all the girls whom she had invited would, with herself and chum, be punished for the frolic.

As she slowly approached the door, a voice from outside faintly reached her ear: "Let me in! open the door!"

Nan was astonished by this. It sounded like somebody in distress. She hurriedly turned the bolt and opened the door a little way. There was a keen wind blowing off the water and the garments of the person on the doorstep fluttered in it, so that Nan knew at once it was a woman; but she could not see her face.

"Who is it?" whispered Nan, while the other truants held their breath.

"For goodness' sake, let me in, child!" exclaimed a vexed voice and the woman pushed by, slamming the door when once she was inside. It did not need the black veil jerked up over her hat to a.s.sure the girls a.s.sembled that Mrs. Cupp was under the veil!

"Good-_night_!" murmured Laura, falling dramatically into May Winslow's arms. "'All is lost!' the captain shouted."

"Sh-h!" gasped the girl from Alabama. "Don't make her mad."

"I couldn't," declared the irrepressible. "She was born that way."