e bare idea
of such a thing was absurd on the face of it. What more rational
explanation could ingenuity discover on the spur of the moment?

Francine was the first to offer a suggestion. She shook and shivered in
her bed, and said, "For heaven's sake, light the candle again! It's a
Ghost."

"Clear away the supper, you fools, before the ghost can report us to
Miss Ladd."

With this excellent advice Emily checked the rising panic. The door was
closed, the candle was lit; all traces of the supper disappeared. For
five minutes more they listened again. No sound came from the stairs; no
teacher, or ghost of a teacher, appeared at the door.

Having eaten her supper, Cecilia's immediate anxieties were at an end;
she was at leisure to exert her intelligence for the benefit of her
schoolfellows. In her gentle ingratiating way, she offered a composing
suggestion. "When we heard the creaking, I don't believe there was
anybody on the stairs. In these old houses there are always strange
noises at night--and they say the stairs here were made more than two
hundred years since."

The girls looked at each other with a sense of relief--but they waited
to hear the opinion of the queen. Emily, as usual, justified the
confidence placed in her. She discovered an ingenious method of putting
Cecilia's suggestion to the test.

"Let's go on talking," she said. "If Cecilia is right, the teachers are
all asleep, and we have nothing to fear from them. If she's wrong, we
shall sooner or later see one of them at the door. Don't be alarmed,
Miss de Sor. Catching us talking at night, in this school, only means
a reprimand. Catching us with a light, ends in punishment. Blow out the
candle."

Francine's belief in the ghost was too sincerely superstitious to be
shaken: she started up in bed. "Oh, don't leave me in the dark! I'll
take the punishment, if we are found out."

"On your sacred word of honor?" Emily stipulated.

"Yes--yes."

The queen's sense of humor was tickled.

"There's something funny," she remarked, addressing her subjects, "in
a big girl like this coming to a new school and beginning with a
punishment. May I ask if you are a foreigner, Miss de Sor?"

"My papa is a Spanish gentleman," Francine answered, with dignity.

"And your mamma?"

"My mamma is English."

"And you have always lived in the West Indies?"

"I have always lived in the Island of St. Domingo."

Emily checked off on her fingers the different points t