"Sh!" warned Mary, attempting to free herself, as they began shouting and tugging at her. "I came out here to visit Mrs. Barnaby, and I'll not play with you till to-morrow. If you don't want to make pictures or cut paper or work the puzzle games you'll have to go outdoors and amuse yourselves. But you must not make such a noise. Mr. Barnaby is asleep."
"Then if you don't want us to wake him up you've got to play with us to keep us still!" cried Brud. "Hasn't she, Sister?"
"Call me Nancy when I tell you!" screamed Sister, in an exasperated tone, stamping her foot. Then, fired by Brud's suggestion, she dropped Mary's hands and darted across the room to the piano, which was standing open in the corner. It was an old-fashioned one, its rosewood case inlaid above the keyboard with mother-of-pearl. The yellow keys were out of tune, but they had never been touched save by careful fingers, for it was one of Mrs. Barnaby's cherished treasures. Now she rose as if she had been struck herself, as both children began pounding upon it ruthlessly with their fists, making a hideous, discordant din.
"Stop, children! Stop, I say!" she demanded. But her commands fell on unheeding ears, and they pounded away until she laid vigorous hands on them and forcibly dragged them away from the piano. Instantly they struggled out of her grasp, and rushing back, pounded the keys harder than before. Mary, who had never seen them act like this, was distressed beyond measure that she had been the cause, even though the unwilling one, of such an invasion. She started to the rescue, thinking savagely that they would have to be gagged and tied, hand and foot, and that she would take pleasure in helping do it.
Old Sammy reached them first, however, his Puritanical soul resenting both the disobedience and the Sabbath-breaking uproar. With one swoop he caught up a child under each arm, and carried them kicking and struggling out-of-doors.
"Here ye'll stay the rest of the afternoon!" he announced, in a gruff voice, as he put them down. "There's all out-of-doors to play in, and if you so much as step over the door-sill into that room until I give ye leave, I'll withe ye!"
It was a mysterious threat, since neither child had ever heard the word withe before, and he said it in a deep, awful voice that made Brud think creepily of the Fee-fi-fo-fum giant in his picture-book at home, who went about smelling blood and saying, "Dead or alive, I will have some!"
For a moment they stood in awed silence, gaping at the only person who had ever intimidated them; then Sister, in a blind rage, seized his clay pipe that he had put down on the bench, and threw it with all her force on the stone floor of the porch.
"You let me alone!" she shrieked, as she darted away from him. "You—you—you old Billygoat, you!" It was the sight of his gray beard that finally suggested to her choking wrath a name ugly enough to hurl at him. Then she took to her heels down the grassy lane, Brud following as fast as possible.
"There's nothing for me to do but follow them," said Mary, starting into the bedroom for her hat and coat, which had been laid away in there. "I'd feel so responsible if they should get hurt, and there are so many things on a big place like this that they are not used to."