“Isn’t it wonderful!” breathed Billie.  “At first I was disappointed but now—­Is that all she left, Mother?”

“Isn’t that enough?” her father interjected, with a laugh.

“I suppose so, but I thought—­”

“Why, yes, that was all,” said her mother, adding the next moment, surprised that she should have forgotten the most important part of all:  “Oh, I forgot to tell you—­Aunt Beatrice left you the house with all its contents.”

“Oh!” breathed Billie again.  “Now I know we’re going to have a wonderful time!”

“What does the old house contain?” questioned Chet.  His mind was on getting some money out of the inheritance for Billie.

“I am sure I do not know,” answered his mother, “It may be completely furnished or it may be quite bare.  I imagine, though, that Aunt Beatrice left it furnished.  But everything is very old, and maybe the rats and moths have played sad havoc there.”

They talked for a little while more about this strange thing that had happened.  Then Mr. Bradley went off to pick up the loose ends of his business and Mrs. Bradley adjourned to the kitchen to discuss supper preparations with the mountainous Debbie.

Left alone, Billie and Chet looked at each other wonderingly.

“Well,” said Billie in a slightly, awed tone, “we expected something to happen, and it certainly did.”

“But we didn’t expect her to leave you an old stone mansion,” crowed Chet.  “Say, Billie,” he added, stopping before her in his excited pacing of the room to gaze at her eagerly, “aren’t you crazy to go out and see it?”

“I’d like,” said Billie fervently, “to start for Cherry Corners on the very next train.  But I’m not so sure I’d like to stay in that place after nightfall,” she added on second thought.

“Why, you’re not afraid of the ghosts, are you?” he asked, with intense scorn.  “Don’t you know that ghosts are all in the imagination?”

“Of course I do.  Who said I was afraid of ghosts?” retorted Billie with spirit.  “You know that I don’t believe in them any more than you do.”

“Well, then what are you afraid of?” insisted Chet.

“Oh, thieves and things.  Tramps maybe,” said Billie thoughtfully; then she added with spirit, as Chet smiled a superior sort of smile:  “I just guess you wouldn’t be able to spend a night in that sort of a gloomy old house away off from everybody without feeling nervous.  Goodness!  I’d be expecting every minute to have the ghosts of dead and gone Indians rise up and scalp me.”

“Thought you didn’t believe in ghosts,” gibed Chet.

“I don’t,” flared Billie, adding rather weakly:  “But I’m not going to take any chances, anyway.”

“But oh,” she added after a few minutes of thoughtful silence, “I can’t help it if it is ungrateful, but I do wish Aunt Beatrice had left me a few hundred dollars instead.  We’ve still got that old statue to worry about, and Three Towers Hall and the military academy.”