“Never! never!” cried Tavia.  “I had enough in that one look!  Didn’t you, Doro?  No more ghosts for mine, thank you!”

“Well,” put in Nat, “it’s a good thing to know when you’ve had enough—­even of ghosts.”

“I’ll go and take a look,” volunteered Dorothy.  “There can be nothing harmful there if Ned did not discover it.”

She advanced toward the closet, in which her cousin was partly hidden, seemingly hunting for the ghost.

“Be careful,” cautioned Roger, “He’ll eat you up, Doro.”

At that moment Dorothy leaped back.  She did see something.

“Look there!” she cried to Ned.

“Where?” he asked innocently, “I don’t see anything.  Look again, Doro.”

She had the courage to look again.

Then she covered her face with her hands and burst out laughing.

“You horrid boys!” she exclaimed as soon as she could do so.  “To play such a trick!” and she proceeded to bring out from the closet the “ghost.”  “I might have known you were up to something!”

“Then why didn’t you?” asked Joe, still dancing about; jubilant over the success of their joke.

“Just look at this, Tavia,” said Dorothy, dragging from the closet the stuffed figure of a man.  “Isn’t he perfectly lovely?  Such a—­”

“Fine figure,” ventured Tavia, now quite calm, and perhaps a trifle embarrassed, for she had made such a fuss, saying he almost grabbed her, and all that.

The joke surely had been a success, and it took some time to allay the spirits of the boys, from Ned to Roger.

Each seemed to attribute the success of the “ghost” to his own particular talent in that line, and when finally Mrs. White insisted that every one go to bed, echoes of laughter would peal out from behind closed doors, and the girls promised to get even, if they had to do so out in Tanglewood Park, “where the real ghost would not stand for any nonsense.”

CHAPTER IX

THE LITTLE WOMAN IN BLACK

Again Dorothy invited Tavia to go to the city with her, but Tavia refused on the plea that her head threatened to ache, and she thought it best to stay at home.  So on the morning following the boys’ joke with the stuffed man, Dorothy got ready early and hurried for the business train to the city.

She reached the station just in time—­merely had her ticket bought when the train steamed in—­and making her way among the crowds of men, she was able to reach a seat in one of the coaches where a few women were scattered in with the many gentlemen who patronized the express.

She had unconsciously followed the one woman who boarded the train at North Birchland, and now took the same seat—­the other getting close to the window and leaving the half seat free for Dorothy.

It was some moments before the girl chanced to look up and observe her companion.  When she did so, she was startled to find her none other than the little woman in black.