'Is that the bug you suggest I'm going to get?' I interrupted icily.
And then he said I was abominable!
I am, however, allowed to sleep in my own room after all, because 'Uncle John' nobly suggested that the powdering closet should be boarded over till he could come and mend the roof, to which my keeper graciously agreed.
But half the night I could hear that bug walking up and down in the powdering closet, scratching the boarded door, trying to get in, until I said to it,—
'You needn't bother about me. I'm not afraid of you.' And then it started howling, and I discovered that it was Fitzbattleaxe up on that ledge in the chimney again, and he kept me awake for hours.
In the morning Ross said he must see if the ledge could not be bricked up somehow. We got a ladder and a light, and he rescued the kitten, who spat at him, and then he said,—
'Why, Meg, it's such a wide ledge, and at the back there's a small stone slab which seems to be loose. Shall I see if I can get it out? Give me something to poke it with.'
I gave him my best silver button-hook, and he jabbed about and broke it, but he eased out the stone and found behind a little hollow, and—yes—an old deed!—Such a nice one, though quite small.
It is an Indenture made the two and twentieth day of January, 1645, in the one and twentieth year of the reign of our sovereign lord Charles by the grace of God of England, Scotland, ffrance, and Ireland, King Defender of the Faith. But the part that intrigues me is that it seems to be a kind of marriage settlement for 'George Albury gives to his wife Mary'—Gidger's cottage—'in consideration of the love and affection he bore her.' So Michael has only been repeating history.
But why did Mary put her deed in my chimney? She must have got so grubby doing it. I'm sure her husband hated her to get so dirty, didn't like her little hands so soiled; but perhaps her George was up that winter with King Charles's army and she hid it there for safety, for the times were much disturbed and she was frightened. Women don't like war, I know just how she felt. I wonder what George and Mary Albury thought that other winter morning, four years later, when their sovereign lord, who by the grace of God was King of England, ffrance, and Ireland, was beheaded on the scaffold in Whitehall.