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"They must be almost through supper," whispered Katie, peeping in at one of the dining-room windows, over which the blind had not been entirely drawn. "With all that laughing and talking they'll never hear us go up the stairs. We can make as much noise as we please."
A dim light burned in the upper hall, but no lamp was lighted in Betty and Lloyd's room.
"Let's not make any," suggested Allison. "They'll think we haven't come. Let's hide and see what they do when they suddenly discover us."
As she spoke there was a sound of many feet in the lower hall, then on the stairs, and an unusual buzz of voices. The girls were scattering to their rooms to dress for the masquerade.
"Hurry!" gasped Allison, stooping down behind a tall rocking-chair. Kitty rolled under one bed and Katie under the other, and there they lay waiting, trying to stifle the giggles which nearly choked them.
CHAPTER VII THE HALLOWE'EN MASQUERADE
"There! It never fails to do that when I'm in a hurry," exclaimed Betty, striking another match as she spoke. It was extinguished as suddenly as the first. She tried another and another with the same result.
"How strange!" she said, wonderingly. "There isn't a window open anywhere, is there?"
"It's the witches," declared Lloyd, laughing. "There must be one standing there by yoah elbow."
The laugh ended in a piercing shriek as she felt something clutch her ankle. "Murdah! Murdah!" she yelled. "Ow! There's something awful undah the bed! It grabbed me by the foot! Ow! Ow!"
"Hush up, goosey!" commanded a familiar voice, and as Betty struck her fifth and last match, which burned steadily, they saw Allison dashing to the door to lock it. Doors were opening all along the corridors, and footsteps hurrying from every direction in response to Lloyd's terrified cry.
"Tell them that it's all right! That it's only a Hallowe'en scare," demanded Allison, in a stage whisper. "Don't let them in. I blew out the matches, and it's only Kitty and Katie under the beds."
"It's all right," called Lloyd, in a quavering tone, but the matron's knock was imperative, and Betty, beckoning the girls frantically toward the closet, fumbled with the bolt until they had whisked into hiding. The one brief glimpse of the rag dolls, falling over each other in their mad haste to escape, was so comical that both Lloyd and Betty were choking with laughter when the matron entered. They could hardly control their voices while they tried to tell her how the matches had gone out and Lloyd had imagined that there were witches in the room.
Smiling indulgently at their foolishness, which she attributed to the excitement of the occasion, the matron withdrew. She could hear them still laughing when she passed through the hall again, several minutes later, for the rag dolls, coming out of the closet as soon as she disappeared, began taking one ridiculous pose after another, in the middle of the floor. The solemn silence in which they struck their limp, boneless attitudes, made the scene all the funnier, and as the girls looked at the surprised expressions Allison had painted on the flat muslin faces, they went into such hysterical laughter that the tears streamed down their faces.
"Oh, girls, do stop!" begged Lloyd,
finally, wiping her eyes. "I've laughed till I ache, and it's time for me to dress, for I promised Magnolia to help her into her costume."
Katie and Kitty subsided into a heap on the divan. "Could you have told who we were if you hadn't known we were coming?" asked Katie.
"Never in the world," answered Betty. "I couldn't tell which is which now, if it were not for your voices."
"We're not going to say a word to any one," said Katie. "We oughtn't to talk, you know, if we carry out our part as it should be. We'll slip up into the gymnasium pretty soon, and be sitting on the floor in a corner when the others come up. We'll lop around and watch the fun till the unmasking begins, then we'll come down here and wait for the rest of you."
All the time they had been performing, Allison had been busy before the mirror, and now turned around in her spectral attire.
"The ghost of the veiled lady!" cried Lloyd. "Oh, Allison, yoah make-up is splendid. You're enough to freeze the blood in one's veins. There couldn't be anything moah spooky-looking than that thin tulle veil. I wish Mom Beck could see you. I've heard her talking about that queah little woman whose house used to stand where the seminary cellah is dug now, till I couldn't close my eyes at night. All the darkies believe she still haunts the place."
Betty had never heard the story, so Allison repeated it while she dressed, adding, "You two must do all you can to spread the report that I'm lurking around. You have seen me yourself, you know. If I had my lump of ice, you'd soon feel the touch of my clammy fingers. I wish you'd give me a piece of newspaper to wrap it in, Betty. Then it won't drip."
"I wish we could carry a lump of ice around with us," gasped Kitty. "All this cotton packed around my head and neck makes me so hot I can scarcely breathe."