"Oh, she is in the highest state of indignation," rejoined I; "just hear how she is attacking us both!"
And certainly Mrs. Hen seemed to be fully verifying my words, for on she came to the room we were in, cackling at the very top of her shrill voice in a most unmistakably incensed manner.
"What's the matter, old lady?" exclaimed I, laughing, as she angrily strutted toward us holding her head very high and looking about her right and left, and over her shoulder behind, with a scared and frightened glance. "Do you think we are shutting up the house with intent to kill and roast and eat you?" I added, opening the window to let her out on the balcony, to find her way home. Instead of immediately leaving us, however, she stood in the room cackling louder than ever, saying something eagerly and earnestly which I longed to understand, feeling certain she was passing some very severe strictures on our want of consideration in having thus disturbed and terrified her, which remarks, I gayly said, must be of an extremely original and amusing nature.
When she had said all she could to enlighten us—and oh that we had been able to understand her!—she walked in the same dignified, albeit disturbed manner out of the window, her whole expression declaring, as I afterward pictured to my imagination, that she could do no more, and must now leave us and our obstinacy to our fate. "All she has received in return for her noisy garrulity is to be well laughed at, especially by myself, so no wonder she is offended," I said, laughing again as I reclosed and fastened the venetians and windows.
CHAPTER XIV.
Anxiety on Aunt Rossiter's account rendered my sleep that night even more light and broken than on the preceding one. I feared that she might be very ill and require help, and be unable to make me hear her call, and it was with the full impression on my mind that her voice was still sounding in my ears that, for the fourth or fifth time, I awoke and listened. Rathfelder kept two or three little dogs, which rambled about the outside premises and were continually barking, but as nobody seemed at any hour to pay the least attention to them, their trouble was, I thought, quite thrown away. To my annoyance, one began barking now on the balcony. I knew it would disturb poor aunt, and felt sure it was that which had awakened me. Under cover of the noise it was making, I jumped out of bed and softly unlocked my door, to hear whether all was quiet in her room.
With a keen thrill of distress I perceived by the light inside that her room door stood partly open, and I was on the point of running across to ascertain the reason, when, to my amazement and terror, I heard aunt's voice, as if in conversation with some one. Who could it be? Had uncle returned after I came to my room? If so, what had brought him? Or was Charlotte ill? These thoughts flashed through my mind as I stood there hesitating what to do. But then came a sudden dread into my heart keen as steel. Was aunt more ill than she would let me know? and had she sent for either Uncle Rossiter or Dr. Manfred? Scarce conscious of my actions, I stole across the floor noiselessly, for my feet were bare, to the open door of aunt's room.