CHAPTER IXHENRIETTA IS VALIANT
Jessie Norwood tried to remember that she should set little Henrietta a good example. She should not show panic because of the mysterious noise in the loft of the abandoned Carter house.
But as the thrashing sounds continued and finally the cause of it came tumbling down the enclosed stairway and bumped against the door that opened from the kitchen upon that stairway, Jessie screamed almost as loud as Amy.
Amy Drew, however, ran out into the rain. Neither Jessie nor the little freckle-faced girl were garbed properly for an appearance in the open; not even in as lonely a place as the clearing about the old Carter house. To tell the truth, Henrietta kept on eating and did not at first get up from the table.
“Aren’t you scared, child?” demanded Jessie, in surprise.
“Course I am,” agreed the little girl. “But ha’nts chase you anywhere. They can go right through keyholes and doors——”
“Mercy! Whatever it is seems determined to come through that door.”
“There ain’t no keyhole to it,” said Henrietta complacently.
The banging continued at the foot of the stairs. Amy was shrieking for her chum to come out of the house. But Jessie began to be ashamed of her momentary panic.
“I’m going to see what it is,” she declared, approaching the door.
“Maybe you won’t see nothing,” said Henrietta. “Mrs. Foley says that ha’nts is sometimes just wind. You don’t see nothing. Only you feel creepy and cold fingers touch you and a chilly breath hits the back o’ your neck.”
“I declare!” exclaimed Jessie. “That Mrs. Foley ought not to tell you such things.”
She looked about for some weapon, for the sounds behind the door panels seemed to suggest something very material. There was a long hardwood stick standing in the corner. It might have been a mop handle or something of the kind. Jessie seized it, and with more courage again walked toward the door.
Bang, bang, thump! the noise was repeated. She stretched a tentative hand toward the latch. Should she lift it? Was there something supernatural on the stairway?
She saw the door tremble from the blows deliveredupon it. There was nothing spiritual about that.
“Whatever it is——”
To punctuate her observation Jessie Norwood lifted the iron latch and jerked open the door. It was dusky in the stairway and she could not see a thing. But almost instantly there tumbled out upon the kitchen floor something that brought shriek after shriek from Jessie’s lips.
“Hi!” cried Henrietta. “Did it bite you?”
Jessie did not stop to answer. She seized her skirt drying before the fire and wrapped it around her bare shoulders as she ran through the outer door. She left behind her writhing all over the kitchen floor a pair of big blacksnakes.
The fighting snakes hissed and thumped about, wound about each other like a braided rope. Probably the warmth of the fire passing up the chimney had stirred the snakes up, and it was evident that they were in no pleasant frame of mind.
“What is it? Ghosts?” cried Amy Drew, standing in the rain.
“It’s worse! It’s snakes!” Jessie declared, looking fearfully behind her, and in at the door.
She had dropped the stick with which she had so valiantly faced the unknown. But when that unknown had become known—and Jessie had always been very much afraid of serpents—all the girl’s valor seemed to have evaporated.
“Mercy!” gasped Amy. “What’s going on in there? Hear that thumping, will you?”
“They are fighting, I guess,” replied her chum.
“Where’s Hen?”
“She’s in there, too. She didn’t stop eating.”
At that Amy began laughing hysterically. “She can’t eat the snakes, can she?” she shrieked at last. “But maybe they’ll eat her. How many snakes are there, Jess?”
“Do you suppose I stopped to count them? Dozens, maybe. They came pouring out of that dark stairway——”
“Whereisthe child?” demanded Amy, who had come up upon the porch, and was now peering in through the doorway.
The sounds from inside, like the beating of a flail, continued. Amy craned her head around the door jamb to see.
“Goodness, mercy, child!” she shouted. “Look out what you are doing! You will get bitten!”
The noise of the thrashing stopped. At least, the larger part of the noise. Henrietta came to the door with the stick that Jessie had dropped in her hand.
“I fixed ’em,” she said calmly. “I just hate snakes. I always kill them black ones. They ain’t got no poison. And I shut the door so if there’s any more upstairs they won’t come down. You can come back to dinner.”
“Well, you darling!” gasped Jessie.
Her chum leaned against the door jamb while peal after peal of laughter shook her. She could just put out her hands and make motions at the freckled little girl.
“She—she—she——”
“For pity’s sake, Amy Drew!” exclaimed Jessie. “You’ll have a fit, or something.”
“She—she didn’t even—stop—chewing!” Amy got out at last.
“Bless her heart! She’s the bravest little thing!” Jessie declared, shakingly. “We two great, big girls should be ashamed.”
“I guess you ain’t so much acquainted with snakes as I am,” Henrietta said, sliding onto the bench again. “But I certainly am glad it wasn’t Carter’s ha’nt.”
“But,” cried Amy, still weak from laughing, “itwasthe ghost. Of course, those snakes had a home upstairs there. Probably in the chimney. And every time anybody came here to picnic and built a fire, they got warmed up and started moving about. Thusly, the ghost stories about the Carter house.”
“Your explanation is ingenious, at any rate,” admitted Jessie. “Ugh! They are still writhing. Are you sure they are dead, Henrietta?”
“That’s the trouble with snakes,” said the child. “They don’t know enough to keep still whenthey’re dead-ed. I smashed their heads good for ’em.”
But Amy could not bear to sit down to the bench again until she had taken the stick and poked the dead but still writhing snakes out of the house. The rain was diminishing now and the thunder and lightning had receded into the distance. The two older girls ate very little of the luncheon they had brought. It was with much amazement that they watched Henrietta absorb sandwiches, cake, eggs, and fruit. She did a thorough job.
“Isn’t she the bravest little thing?” Jessie whispered to her chum. “Did you ever hear the like?”
“I guess that girl we saw run away with, was her cousin all right,” said Amy. “How she did fight!”
At that statement Jessie was reminded of the thing that had been puzzling her for some days. She began asking questions about Bertha, how she looked, how old she was, and how she was dressed.
“She’s just my cousin. She is as old as you girls, I guess, but not so awful old,” Henrietta said. “I don’t know what she had on her. She ain’t as pretty as you girls. Guess there ain’t none of our family real pretty,” and Henrietta shook her head with reflection.
“What happened to her that she wanted to leave that dreadful fat woman?” asked Amy,now, as well as her chum, taking an interest in the matter.
“There wasn’t a thing happened to her that I know of,” said Henrietta, shaking her head again. “But by the way that lady talked it would happen to her if she got hold of Bertha again.”
“How dreadful,” murmured Jessie, looking at her chum.
“I don’t see how we can help the girl,” said Amy. “She has been shut up some place, of course. If I could just think who that skinny woman is—or who she looks like. But how she can drive a car!”
“I think we can do something,” Jessie declared. “I’ve had my head so full of radio that I haven’t thought much about this poor child’s cousin and her trouble.”
“What will you do?” asked Amy.
“Tell daddy. He ought to be able to advise.”
“That’s a fact,” agreed Amy, her eyes twinkling. “He is quite a good lawyer. Of course, not so good as Mr. Wilbur Drew. But he’ll do at a pinch.”