Girls! Girls! Come quick and see our ghost before it wakes up!"

The startling summons brought the sleepers to their feet in a twinkling
and when Peggy introduced the explanation of the night's mystery, there
was a good deal of shame-faced laughter. Tacitly the girls agreed that
the joke would be more enjoyable if its circulation were strictly
limited, and even when at the breakfast-table Aunt Abigail remarked that
she never saw such air for producing sound sleep, three heavy-eyed girls
exchanged glances, and kept their own counsel.

But a little later Dorothy was anxious for enlightenment on a point in
natural history. "Aunt Peggy, what makes you call a mousie a goose?"

"Why, I didn't, dear. A mouse and a goose aren't the least bit alike."

"But I heard you say it, Aunt Peggy. When I showed you the mousie, you
ran and said, 'Here's our goose.'"

As good luck would have it, Ruth and Amy were the only ones to overhear
the remark, and Peggy was not called upon to satisfy more than Dorothy's
curiosity.

"That funny little thing that looks like a mouse, Dorothy, except for
its horrid black wings, is called a bat. And the goose was only Aunt
Peggy."

"And Ruth, another," remarked the owner of that name.

"And I was Number Three. Three gooses instead of three graces," was
Amy's addition, after which the three laughed in the fashion which
Dorothy found so mystifying, and consequently objectionable.

That was not the last of the story-telling evenings by any means. Aunt
Abigail had abundant opportunity to display her _repertoire_. She
told pathetic stories, which brought the tears to the girls' eyes, and
funny stories, which made them laugh until they cried, and the most
thrilling tales of adventure. But she was never called upon to duplicate
her early success. In the opinion of her entire audience, apparently,
one night of ghost stories was enough for the entire summer.

CHAPTER V

A SAFE AND SANE FOURTH

"The three-legged race is what I'm dying to see," Amy declared. "It
sounds so mysterious, you know, like some new kind of quadruped. No, I
don't mean that," she added hastily, as Peggy laughed. "Quadrupeds have
to have four legs, don't they? Well, anyway, it sounds like something
queer."

The village celebration of the approaching Fourth of July had for some
days been the chief topic of conversation in Dolittle Cottage. The idea
of a picnic, with the whole community invited, was in itself a startling