Dropping it into her work-box, she went downstairs, followed by the dog, who made many ineffectual attempts for her to play with him, as she had often done during her leisure hours. “Not now, doggie,” she said, patting his head. “I can’t call you Sherry, but next time I hear your master do so I trust I shall have sense enough to know he does not mean me. Three times and out!” She was beginning to feel better and went about her work with her usual energy, although still depressed when she thought of the return of the somnambulistic habit and what it might lead to. CHAPTER XI THE FANCY DANCE “What do you think _has_ happened and is going to happen?” Polly said, as they were laying the tables for lunch. Polly generally managed to know what was going on, and was bursting with her news, which she began to impart. They had opened the old chest, she said, and it was full of brocades and laces and mulls, though she didn’t know what that was,—some kind of muslin, she believed,—and pongees and high-heeled, pointed slippers and jewelry and a fine white gown and piles of bed and table linen. The gowns were spread out in Miss Marsh’s room and smelt like dead folks, and they were all in there screeching with delight, and telling what they meant to do, and trying the length of the gowns to see who they would fit, “and, oh, dear Suz, such times as we are going to have! And, oh, I forgot the queer part. Somebody had moved the chest in the night. Miss Doane heard ’em walking softly, as if in their stocking feet, and heard the scrape on the floor. Mother Groves will be asking us next if we were up there. Let her. I can prove an alibi. Here she comes!” Polly stopped, silenced by the appearance of Mrs. Groves, who came to look over the tables and see that everything was in order. Since Alex.’s interference with the length of the dinner that lady had subsided a good deal. If Mr. Marsh was going to run things, he could run them, she confided to the _chef_, who replied: “’F I’se you, I’d let him. Girls is a ticklish lot to manage. Better give ’em a long rope.” And Mrs. Groves had given them quite a length of rope, but kept her eyes pretty close on Sherry, whose chin in the air still annoyed and irritated her. On this occasion she stopped to find fault with some trivial arrangement which she wished changed, and then, as Polly had predicted, said to them: “Young women, someone, I hear, was in the attic last night and moved the cedar chest; for what purpose I don’t know, unless to get into it. I took you all for honest girls, and shall be sorry to find I was mistaken. No. 4, were you in the attic last night?” “No, ma’am!” and Polly squared her elbows as for a fight. “No. 3, were you there, or do you know who was?” Mrs. Groves continued, while No. 3’s denial was as prompt as that of No. 4. “No. 2, what do you know of it? Were you there?” was Mrs. Groves’ next question.