It would be exaggeration to say that Doris slept, all told, one hour during the ensuing night. She napped at intervals, to be sure, but hour after hour she tossed about in her bed, in the room next to her mother, pulling out her watch every twenty minutes or so, and switching on the electric light to ascertain the time. Never in all her life had a night seemed so long. Would the morning ever come, and with it the revelation of the strange secret Sally knew?
Like many girls of her age, and like many older folks too, if the truth were known, Doris loved above all things, a mystery. Into her well-ordered and regulated life there had never entered one or even the suspicion of one. And since her own life was so devoid of this fascination, she had gone about for several years, speculating in her own imagination about the lives of others, and wondering if mystery ever entered into their existences. But not until her meeting with little Sally Carter, had there been even the faintest suggestion of such a thing. And now, at last - ! She pulled out her watch and switched on her light for the fortieth time. Only quarter to five. But through her windows she could see the faint dawn breaking over the river, so she rose softly, dressed, and sat down to watch the coming of day.
At nine o'clock she was pacing nervously up and down the beach. And when old "45" at last grated on the sand, she hopped in with a glad cry, kissed and hugged Genevieve, who was devoting her attention to her thumb, in the stern seat, as usual, and sank down in the vacant rowing-seat, remarking to Sally:
"Hello, dear! I 'm awfully glad you 've come!" This remark may not seem to express very adequately her inward state of excitement but she had resolved not to let Sally see how tremendously anxious she was.
The trip to Slipper Point was a somewhat silent one. Neither of the girls seemed inclined to conversation and, besides that, there was a stiff head-wind blowing and the pulling was difficult. When they had beached the boat, at length, on the golden sandbar of Slipper Point, Doris only looked toward Sally and said:
"So you 're going to show me at last, dear?" But Sally hesitated a moment.
"Doris," she began, "this is my secret - and Genevieve's - and I never thought I 'd tell any one about it. It 's the only secret I ever had worth anything, but I 'm going to tell you, - well, because I - I think so much of you. Will you solemnly promise - cross your heart - that you 'll never tell any one?"
Doris gazed straight into Sally's somewhat troubled eyes. "I don't need to 'cross my heart,' Sally. I just give you my word of honor I won't, unless sometime you wish it. I 've not breathed a word of the fact that you had a secret, even to Mother. And I 've never kept anything from her before." And this simple statement completely satisfied Sally.
"Come on, then," she said. "Follow Genevieve and me, and we 'll give you the surprise of your life."
She grasped her small sister's hand and led the way, and Doris obediently followed. To her surprise, however, they did not scramble up the sandy pine-covered slope as usual, but picked their way, instead, along the tiny strip of beach on the farther side of the point where the river ate into the shore in a great, sweeping cove. After trudging along in this way for nearly a quarter of a mile, Sally suddenly struck up into the woods through a deep little ravine. It was a wild scramble through the dense underbrush and over the boughs of fallen pine trees. Sally and Genevieve, more accustomed to the journey, managed to keep well ahead of Doris, who was scratching her hands freely and doing ruinous damage to her clothes plunging through the thorny tangle. At last the two, who were a distance of not more than fifty feet ahead of her, halted, and Sally called out:
"Now stand where you are, turn your back to us and count ten - slowly. Don't turn round and look till you 've finished counting." Doris obediently turned her back, and slowly and deliberately "counted ten." Then she turned about again to face them.
To her complete amazement, there was not a trace of them to be seen!
Thinking they had merely slipped down and hidden in the undergrowth to tease her, she scrambled to the spot where they had stood. But they were not there. She had, moreover, heard no sound of their progress, no snapping, cracking or breaking of branches, no swish of trailing through the vines and high grass. They could not have advanced twenty feet in any direction, in the short time she had been looking away from them. Of both these facts she was certain. Yet they had disappeared as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed them. Where, in the name of all mystery, could they be?
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