The Mystery at Dark Cedars

“I was afraid of waking you,” she explained. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“Well, it’s all right now,” said Mary Louise soothingly. “Ordinarily we shouldn’t have been scared. But in this house, where everybody talks about seeing ghosts all the time, it’s natural for us to be keyed up.”

“Why that woman doesn’t put in electricity,” muttered Jane, “is more than I can see. It’s positively barbarous!”

“Come over and sit here on the bed, Elsie, and tell us why you came downstairs,” invited Mary Louise. “Are you afraid of the storm?”

“Yes, a little bit. But I thought I heard something down in the yard.”

“Old Mrs. Grant’s ghost?” inquired Jane lightly.

“Maybe it was Abraham Lincoln Jones, returning for more chickens,” surmised Mary Louise. “But no, it couldn’t be, or Silky would be barking – he could hear that from the cellar – so it must be just the wind, Elsie. It does make an uncanny sound through all those trees.”

“May I stay here till the storm is over?” asked the girl.

“Certainly.”

If it had not been so hot, Mary Louise would have told Elsie to sleep with them. But three in a bed, and a rather uncomfortable bed at that, was too close quarters on a night like this.

The storm lasted for perhaps an hour, while the girls sat chatting together. As the thundering subsided, Jane began to yawn.

“Suppose I go up to the attic and sleep with Elsie?” she said to Mary Louise, “if you’re not afraid to stay in this room by yourself.”

“Of course I’m not!” replied her chum. “I think that’s a fine idea, and your being there will prevent Elsie from being nervous and hearing things. Does it suit you, Elsie?”

“Yes! Oh, I’d love it! If you’re sure you don’t mind, Mary Louise.”

“I don’t expect to mind anything in about five minutes,” yawned Mary Louise. “I’m dead for sleep.”

She was correct in her surmise: she knew nothing at all until the bright sunshine was pouring into her room and Jane wakened her by throwing a pillow at her head.

“Wake up, lazybones!” she cried. “Don’t you realize that today is the picnic?”

Mary Louise threw the pillow back at her chum and jumped out of bed.

“What a glorious day!” she exclaimed. “And so much cooler.”

Elsie, attired in her new pink linen dress, dashed into the room.

“Oh, this is something like!” she cried. “I haven’t heard any gayety like this for three years!”

“Mary Louise is always ‘Gay,’” remarked Jane demurely. “In fact, she’ll be ‘Gay’ till she gets married.”

Her chum hurled the other pillow from Miss Grant’s bed just as Hannah poked her nose into the room.

“Don’t you girls throw them pillows around!” she commanded. “Miss Mattie is that careful about her bed – she even makes it herself. And at house-cleanin’ time I ain’t allowed to touch it!”

“It’s a wonder she let you sleep on it, Mary Louise,” observed Elsie.

“Made me sleep on it, you mean.” Then, of Hannah, she inquired, “How soon do we have breakfast?”

“Right away, soon as you’re dressed. Then you girls can help pack up some doughnuts and rolls I made for your picnic.”

“You’re an angel, Hannah!” exclaimed Mary Louise. To the girls she said, “Scram, if you want me downstairs in two minutes.”

Soon after breakfast the cars arrived. There were three of them – the two sports roadsters belonging to Max Miller and Norman Wilder, and a sedan driven by one of the girls of their crowd, a small, red-haired girl named Hope Dorsey, who looked like Janet Gaynor.

Max had brought an extra boy for Elsie, a junior at high school, by the name of Kenneth Dormer, and Mary Louise introduced him, putting him with Elsie in Max’s rumble seat. She herself got into the front.

“Got your swimming suit, Mary Lou?” asked Max, as he started his car with its usual sudden leap.

“Of course,” she replied. “As a matter of fact, I brought two of them.”

“I hadn’t noticed you were getting that fat!”

“That’s just about enough out of you! I don’t admire the Mae West figure, you know.”

“Then why two suits?” inquired the young man. “Change of costume?”

“One for Elsie and one for me,” explained Mary Louise. “I don’t believe Elsie can swim, but she’ll soon learn. Will you teach her, Max?”

“I don’t think I’ll get a chance to, from the way I saw Ken making eyes at her. He’ll probably have a monopoly on the teaching.”

Mary Louise smiled: this was just the way she wanted things to be.

The picnic grounds near Cooper’s woods were only a couple of miles from Riverside. A wide stream which flowed through the woods had been dammed up for swimming, and here the boys and men of Riverside had built two rough shacks for dressing houses. The cars were no sooner unloaded than the boys and girls dashed for their respective bath houses.

“Last one in the pool is a monkey!” called Max, as he locked his car.

“I guess I’ll be the monkey,” remarked Elsie. “Because I have a suit I’m not familiar with.”

“I’ll help you,” offered Mary Louise.

They were dressed in no time at all; as usual the girls were ahead of the boys. They were all in the water by the time the boys came out of their shack.

The pool was empty except for a few children, so the young people from Riverside had a chance to play water games and to dive to their hearts’ content. Everybody except Elsie Grant knew how to swim, and Mary Louise and several of the others were capable of executing some remarkable stunt diving.

Before noontime arrived Elsie found herself venturing into the deeper parts of the pool, and, with Kenneth or Mary Louise beside her, she actually swam several yards. All the while she was laughing and shouting as she had not done since her parents’ death; the cloud of suspicion that had been hanging over her head for the past few days was forgotten. She was a normal, happy girl again.

The lunch that followed provided even more fun and hilarity than the swim. It seemed as if their mothers had supplied everything in the world to eat. Cakes and pies and sandwiches; hot dogs and steaks to be cooked over the fire which the boys built; ice cream in dry ice, and refreshing drinks of fruit juices, iced tea, and soda water. Keen as their appetites were from the morning’s swim, the young people could not begin to eat everything they had brought.

“We’ll have enough left for supper,” said Mary Louise, leaning back against a tree trunk with a sigh of content.

“If the ants don’t eat it up,” returned Jane. “We better cover things up.”

“We’ll do it right away,” announced Hope Dorsey. “Come on, boys! you burn rubbish, and we girls will pack food.”

“I can’t move,” protested Max. “The ants are welcome to their share as far as I’m concerned. I don’t think I’ll ever eat again.”