"I must say," she began, buttering a piece of bread energetically, "that it isn't like us Outdoor Girls to let anything scare us into staying near the house. Why, I declare, I don't believe there is one of us who would dare poke her nose past that rose bush in front of the porch after sundown. That's a pretty state of affairs, isn't it?" "Well, you needn't glare at me as if it were all my fault," retorted Amy with spirit. "I'm sure I didn't wish the horrible old thing on us." "I only wish I knew who did," sighed Grace, adding, with a sudden burst of ferocity: "I would wring his neck." "Suppose somebody suggests something we can do about it," said Betty reasonably. "I'm sure that after the other night nobody could blame us for being frightened." "No. But there is one thing I can blame you for," said Mollie, glaring morosely at her chum. "And that is for not letting the horrible old thing drown itself when it so very evidently wanted to. If that had happened all our worries would have been over." "Goodness, Mollie, what a horrible idea!" Betty protested. "I don't think it was a horrible idea," Grace put in. "I think it was just about the finest idea I ever heard of." "Yes," added Amy with a deceptive mildness, "if you hadn't called out just then, Betty, the whole thing would have been over and the Thing would have been drowned. And then," she added plaintively, "we would have been able to enjoy our summer." "It really wasn't any of our business, you know," Grace finished, moodily. For a moment Betty sat and stared at them, undecided whether to be amused or indignant. However, the latter emotion won and she turned upon the girls with flashing eyes. "I think you are all perfectly horrid," she said. "And I would think you were worse if I weren't perfectly sure that you don't really mean what you say. Why, just suppose," she went on earnestly, "that we had willingly permitted that man to commit suicide? Why, we would have been just as guilty as if we had murdered him!" "But he may have done it since anyway," muttered Mollie stubbornly. "He didn't have to wait to ask our permission, and there are plenty of times that he can commit suicide when we are not around--if he really wants to do it." "What he or anybody else does when we are not around, is not our business," answered Betty. "We can't help what happens in our absence." "You seem to take it for granted that it is a man," Mollie continued, still stubbornly argumentative. "But I am not so sure about that. The several times that we have seen the--the--Thing--it has looked as much animal as human to me." "Well, we won't argue that point," said Betty, rising and beginning to clear away the dishes, "because we don't know anything about it."