“Somebody else may have done it for a joke on Betty or all of us, you remember that sneeze around the corner!” “The plot thickens,” laughed Cathalina. “Did the young man look like Louise?” “Yes, very much. I think he really is her brother, or some near relative, but why couldn’t he come to see her at some decent hour, and inside of Greycliff?” Nobody could answer that question. CHAPTER XX THE JUNIOR PICNIC Sometimes a mystery remains one for weeks and months or is never solved, and many a girl at school has had to endure an unjust suspicion; but it was odd how bits of information came to the girls in the next few days, “links in the chain of evidence”, as Betty said. “I shall not say one word to Louise about the packet, or ask if she got it! If it _was_ Louise, ‘Louise of Prussia’ and she was at the party, she’ll know it was I who brought it. If somebody else played the trick on me, she’ll have no means of knowing who it was, for her brother could only tell that it was a girl dressed up as a ghost, and there were about twenty of us. So let her betray herself!” and Betty struck an attitude, one hand waving to high heaven, the other upon her heart. This was the morning after the ghost party, and while Betty was thus delivering herself to Cathalina, the other girls having scattered, Molly, the colored maid, came in to clean the room. “Does you-all care foh these masks?” she asked, as she held up one from the waste basket which she was about to empty. “Ef yo’ doesn’t, I’ll tek it along to Snowla; she’ll like to play with it.” “Why, certainly, Molly,” returned Cathalina, “I threw it there.” “Well, ah didn’t know. Ah picked one up off’n the flo’ in Miss Holley’s room this mawnin’ an’ she jus’ nachelly snatched it out’n ma han’, an’ tol’ me nevah to put anything in the waste basket without askin’.” Betty and Cathalina exchanged glances as they left the room to Molly’s care. And as they went down stairs they fell in with Victoria, who asked, “What were you girls saying last night to make Louise Holley so mad at you? I met her coming in the side door with a red face and saying, ‘Smarties! I’ll get even with them!’ I said, ‘What’s the matter, Louise?’ and she said, ‘O, nothing,—that Betty!’” “She had not been with us, and Betty did not say anything that I know of.” “I saw you all together afterwards and I thought maybe she had been with you.” Victoria went off in another direction as they all reached the foot of the steps outside. “There! She _was_ listening and thought you said that about her instead of Hilary.” “Seems to me Isabel said something, too. Why I wasn’t even there till afterwards! But the girls told me what had been said and about the sneeze they heard.” “Probably she made up her mind to get into the party someway, and when she saw you there after the girls had gone took that chance to fool you.”