Part 9 (1/2)

”No, Master Waller. I only heard it walking. Somewhere up by your room--I mean your den, as you call it. And then all in the dark there come _b.u.mpity b.u.mp_ all down the stairs, and I shruck and shruck again, and ran for my life.”

”My!” said cook. ”Was it as bad as that? But what was it, my dear?”

”Oh, I don't know, cook. Something dreadfully horrid, and it was dragging a dead body all down the stairs, and knocking the back of the head hard on every step.”

”Fancy!” said Martha, with an emphatic sniff. ”It's all stuff, and nonsense. No such thing could have happened. It was all because you went up in the dark.”

From feeling startled, and in dread of his secret being known, a rapid change came over Waller; half-suspecting what must have occurred, and finding it covered by the girl's superst.i.tious notions, added to which there were the feathers, the sneezes, and the cook's blessings upon his Majesty King George the Third, the boy's risible faculties were so bestirred that he burst into a roar of laughter.

The effect was almost magical. Bella, who had been lying stretched out upon her back, tapping the floor with her heels occasionally in her paroxysms, suddenly started bolt upright, to exclaim in an indignant voice--

”Yes, it's all very fine for you to laugh, Master Waller!”

”Well, who wouldn't laugh at such nonsense?” said the boy.

”But it isn't nonsense, nor it isn't stuff, cook. You may laugh, sir, but there's something walks up and down there in the dead of the night, and I heard it only last night, too, and told cook.”

Martha Gusset slowly bent her head by way of acquiescence, and made as if to throw the goose-wing, with which she had been fanning herself, behind the fire, but altered her mind, and put it on the chimneypiece with the bright bra.s.s candlesticks.

”Up and down where?” asked Waller.

”Oh, I don't know, sir; but it was somewhere in the roof.”

”Bah!” cried Waller, contemptuously. ”And pray what did cook say?” he went on, as he gave a glance at the comfortable-looking dame.

”Said she was a silly goose, my dear,” cried the lady of the kitchen, with something like a snort, ”and that she mustn't eat so much for supper. I telled her, Master Waller, that she might go up and down the stairs and pa.s.sages in the dead of the night for a hundred years, and she'd never see anything uglier than herself.”

”Ah, you wait,” said Bella.

”Did you hear or see anything, cook?” said Waller tentatively.

”I always go to bed to sleep, my dear.”

”But I mean this evening, just now?”

”No, my dear. I had had my tea, and was having a comfortable nap over the fire.”

”Why, Bella,” said Waller, laughing, ”you must have heard one of those big bouncing rats that make their nests in the ivy, and come in through the windows in the night.”

”Ah, you may sneer at me, Master Waller, but I wouldn't sleep up there alone of a night for crowns of gold. It was just as I said. It was just like one of those horrid things you see in the old books in master's library, dragging dead bodies down the stairs.”

”Rat dragging a dead sparrow,” said Waller, and he hurried out of the kitchen to make his way out into the hall, where, consequent upon her fright, Bella had not lit the lamp, and then cautiously upstairs to the top attic, where he softly tried the door. He found it still fastened, and uttered a low signal agreed upon between the boys.

This was responded to by the click of the lock, and as Waller entered his fugitive guest went on tiptoe back to the old chair on which he pa.s.sed so much of his time, and there was just faint light enough coming through the window to show that he was softly rubbing his back.

”What's the matter?” said Waller.

”Fell down and hurt myself--all down those stairs. Made a big lump on my head.”

”Why, what were you doing?”