Children -- Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Children's stories; Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction
Believing her friend offended at her base desertion at the crisis of the
affair, Julia curbed her curiosity and soon forgot it in sleep. Sally
slept also, feeling like a hero reposing after a hard-won battle.
She was up betimes and ready to receive her early visitors with an air
of triumph, which silenced every jeer and convinced the most skeptical
that she had something sensational to tell at last.
When the girls had perched themselves on any available article of
furniture, they waited with respectful eagerness, while Sally retired to
the hall for a moment, and Julia rolled her eyes, with her finger on her
lips, looking as if she could tell much if she dared.
Sally returned somewhat flushed, but very sober, and in a few dramatic
words related the adventures of the night, up to the point where she
left Julia quivering ignominiously in the closet, and, like Horatius,
faced the foe alone.
"I followed till the ghost entered a window."
"Which?" demanded five awestruck voices at once.
"The last."
"Ours?" whispered Kitty, pale as her collar, while Cordy, her room-mate,
sat aghast.
"As it turned to shut the window the veil fell back and I saw the face."
Sally spoke in a whisper and added, with a sudden start, "I see it now!"
Every girl sprang or tumbled off her perch as if an electric shock had
moved them, and stared about them as Nelly cried wildly, "Where? oh,
where?"
"There!" and Sally pointed at the palest face in the room, while her own
reddened with the mirth she was vainly trying to suppress.
"Cordy?"
A general shriek of amazement and incredulity followed the question,
while Sally laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks at the dumb
dismay of the innocent ghost.
As soon as she could be heard she quickly explained: "Yes, it was Cordy,
walking in her sleep. She wore her white flannel wrapper, and a cloud
round her head, and took her exercise over the roofs at midnight, so
that no time might be lost. I don't wonder she is tired in the morning,
after such dangerous gymnastics as these."
"But she couldn't vanish in that strange way off the house-top without
breaking her neck," said Julia, much relieved, but still mystified.
"She didn't fly nor fall, but went down the ladder left by the painters.
Look at the soles of her felt slippers, if you doubt me, and see the red
paint from the roof. We couldn't open the cupola windows, you remember,
but this morning I took a stroll and looked up and saw how she did it
asleep, though she never would dare to do it awake. Somnambulists do
dreadfully dangerous things, you know," said Sally, as if her experience
of those peculiar people had been vast and varied.
"How could I? It's horrid to think of. Why did you let me, Kit?" cried
Cordy, uncertain whether to be proud or ashamed of her exploit.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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