nt downstairs
rooms. In each one they listened. In some they could hear the noise more
plainly than in others. Finally they came to the kitchen.
"It sounds plainer here," said Russ.
And, just then, the groan sounded so near at hand that Rose jumped and
caught Russ by the arm.
"O-u-g-h-m!"
Again the groan sounded.
"It's over in there!" cried Laddie, pointing to a large storeroom
opening out of the kitchen. The door of this room was open, and the
noise, indeed, did seem to come from there.
"Let's go in!" suggested Russ, and he started toward it.
"Maybe you'd better call Grandpa and Daddy, and let them look," said Vi.
Just then Mother Bunker and Grandma Ford, followed by the two smallest
children, came into the kitchen.
"Oh, we've found the ghost!" cried Rose to her mother. "It's in the
storeroom! Listen!"
The two women listened. The groan sounded very plainly, and did seem to
come from the room off the kitchen.
Grandma Ford walked in. All was quiet for a moment, and then the noise
sounded again.
"I've found it!" cried Grandma Ford. "I've found the ghost at last!"
"What is it?" exclaimed Mother Bunker.
"I don't know exactly what makes it," said Grandma Ford; "but the noise
comes out of this rain-water pipe under the window of the storeroom.
We'll call Daddy Bunker and Grandpa Ford and have them look. But come in
and listen, all of you."
With their mother the six little Bunkers went into the storeroom. Just
as they entered the groan sounded loudly, and, as Grandma Ford said, it
came from a rain-water pipe that ran slantingly under the window.
"That's the ghost!" cried Mother Bunker. "No wonder we couldn't find it.
We never looked here before."
And when Daddy Bunker and Grandpa Ford came down out of the attic, where
they had not been able to find the "ghost," though they heard the sound
of it faintly there, they were told what the six little Bunkers had
discovered with the help of Grandma Ford.
"Yes, the noise comes from the rain-water pipe," said Grandpa Ford, when
he had looked and listened carefully.
"What makes it?" asked Daddy Bunker.
"Well, the pipe is broken, and partly filled with water from the rain or
melted snow. There are also some dried leaves in the pipe. One end has
sunk down and the wind blows across that and makes a hollow, groaning
sound, just as you can make by blowing across the open mouth of a big,
empty bottle. That was the ghost--the wind blowing across the
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