“That was a long time ago,” said Ambrose quickly. “I wouldn’t mind it now.”
“In the dark?”
“Well, I don’t believe you’d go,” said Nancy. “You might perhaps go two or three steps, and then you’d scream out and run away; wouldn’t he, Pennie?”
“Why, you know he was brave about the cow,” said Pennie, “braver than any of us.”
“That was different. He’s quite as much afraid of the dark as ever. I call it babyish.”
Nancy looked defiantly at her brother, who was getting very red in the face. She was prepared to have something thrown at her, or at least to have her hair, which she wore in a plaited pig-tail, violently pulled, but nothing of the sort happened. Nurse came soon afterwards and bore away David and Dickie, and as she left the room she remarked that the wind was moaning “just like a Christian.”
It certainly was making a most mournful noise that evening, but not at all like a Christian, Ambrose thought, as he listened to it—much more like Pennie’s Goblin Lady and her musical performances.
Pennie had finished her stories now, and she and Nancy were deeply engaged with their dolls in a corner of the room; this being an amusement in which Ambrose took no interest, he remained seated on the table occupied with his own reflections after Nurse had left the room with the two children.
Nancy’s taunt about the garret was rankling in his mind, though he had not resented it openly as was his custom, and it rankled all the more because he felt that it was true. Yes, it was true. He could not possibly go into the garret alone in the dark, and yet if he really were a brave boy he ought to be able to do it. Was he brave, he wondered? Father had said so, and yet just now he certainly felt something very like fear at the very thought of the Goblin Lady.
In increasing perplexity he ruffled up his hair until it stood out wildly in all directions; boom! boom! went the wind, and then there followed a long wailing sort of sigh which seemed to come floating down from the very top of the house.