We were talking quietly about Minerva that evening after the Farnets had driven home, when the light in her bedroom that had been shining out on an elm at the side of the house, suddenly disappeared, there came a shriek, and then,
“Oh, Lordy, oh Lordy, leggo my hair.”
I thought of tramps, but Ethel, being a woman, divined what had happened and bade me light a lantern quickly. I rushed to the kitchen and lighted it. The house was not on fire, that was certain. Minerva was either having a fit or an encounter with a burglar, for there was a sound as of heavy foot-falls and choking ejaculations.
I seized the kitchen poker, expecting to sell my life at a bargain, but Ethel looked at me commiseratingly and with the one word “Bat,” she hurried up the back stairs.
I must say that at first I took the word to mean that Minerva had been imbibing and I wondered at Ethel’s using so idiomatic an expression, but when she entered the room and the sounds almost immediately stopped, to be followed by sobbing, I suddenly divined what she meant.
“No, Minerva, it isn’t poisonous.” (More lessons in Natural History.) “Probably the poor thing was more frightened than you are.”
I did not think it at all likely. At any rate, it had been far more reticent.
“I’ll give you a screen from the spare room to put in your window. It was attracted by the light. It’s a sort of mouse with wings.”
“Striped rats and mice with wings! Lordy, the country’s awful!”
Poor Minerva! She must have been surprised to see that country horses were just like those of the city. Certainly a horse has more evil potentiality than a stupid little bat, but when a beast has you by the hair and you see him, as it were, through the back of your head, he is apt to loom large and terrifying.