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.

“If I were I did not know it, and went in my sleep,” was the reply of No. 2, for which Sherry blessed her, as it made her answer easy.

She was very white, with a look of defiance in her dark eyes, and another,—a strange, far-off look such as they always had after one of her somnambulistic fits. Mrs. Groves noticed it, and hesitated a little before she said, “Fanny, were you there?”

The _Fanny_ was a great concession,—made Mrs. Groves hardly knew why, except that with all her dislike of the girl she had a kind of respect for her.

“If I were there I was asleep and did not know it,” Fanny answered, with a decided upward tilt of her chin, and a flash in her eyes as she continued fearlessly: “If you and Mr. Marsh think either of us would be guilty of trying to break open a chest which did not belong to us, you should dismiss us at once.”

She looked like a young queen as she stood there with that strange shifting light in her eyes, and for a moment Mrs. Groves herself was quelled.

“Mr. Marsh has said nothing to me about it,” she answered. “My information came from another source, and as matron here it is my duty to inquire into things and keep order if I can.”

Sherry bowed her head, while Mrs. Groves departed, with Polly taking a few mimicking steps behind her.

“Oh, Polly!” Nos. 2 and 3 began, when Mrs. Groves was gone. “How did you hear all the stuff you are telling us? You surely have listened.”

“Not a bit of it,” Polly answered. “I was in my room near the attic stairs, and heard the squeals as they took out the things, and saw them bring ’em down to Miss Marsh’s room, and Mr. Reeves had put on a white bonnet with pink strings and a pair of stays, which looked like a saddle, and I heard ’em say the things were nearly a hundred years old, and belonged to that lady buried across the road. If I’se her, I’d appear to ’em, making fun of my clothes. They are to have a fancy dance and wear her things as far as they go. But, for the land’s sake, what’s the matter?” and she turned to Sherry, whose face was white as the lunch cloth and who was clutching a chair for support.

“Nothing much,” Sherry answered. “I did not sleep well and have a nervous headache. Go on and tell us of the fancy dance. When is it to be?”

Polly didn’t know. “We shall hear about it at lunch,” she said, and they