“Who is it? It can’t be a thief, because he would know that we are too poor to have anything worth stealing. And yet—”
And yet it must be a thief. Else, why was he creeping about so quietly? Her heart began to beat terribly fast, and she shivered with fear. She stepped across the passage and listened at the door with the chink of light under it. If mother and Madge were awake she would speak to them, but she dared not tap unless she heard their voices, for fear of disturbing the baby. Had the wood that divided her from them only been transparent she would have seen her mother in an arm-chair half dozing, but still awake enough to notice if there were any uneasy movement on the part of the little invalid that lay in her arms, and Madge, still dressed, lying across the bed, just as she had carelessly thrown herself, in a sound sleep.
How still all was within! So still that Bessie forgot the noise down-stairs, in the fear that this silence must mean something wrong. Perhaps the little brother was already gone from among them when she was kneeling by her bed asking that he might be allowed to stay here and grow up to be a man. The tears rose in her eyes and sobs in her throat.
All at once a cold chill stole over her. The cautious step was coming upstairs, slowly and very softly. It was a man certainly, but what he wanted she could not guess. Many dreadful stories that she had heard came into her mind, and she dared not cry out or shriek for fear he might strike her down. Each step creaked under his weight, and all was so still that she could even hear his heavy breathing as she pressed herself against the wall in the hope that he would pass her in the dark.
He was advancing towards her now, and before she could summon up courage to move his hand had touched her, and he had stifled an exclamation of surprise. Bessie trembled so that she was sinking to the floor from fright, but the hand that had touched her grasped her by the arm and held her up.
“Hallo! Who’s this?”
The little girl could hardly keep back a scream of joy and relief as she heard these muttered words.
“Oh, Bob!” she said in a sobbing whisper, “how you frightened me!”
“Why? What’s the matter? What are you doing here? What are you shivering about?”
“I came to listen if—if everything was all right.”