"What of, silly? If you did fall it's only a little way on to the stairs, and I'll catch you. Besides, you'll feel much safer when you're standing up."
Barbara, facing the stairs, and with her back to the alarming void between her perch and the hall-floor, rose trembling to her feet.
"You look splendid," said Alex. "Now then!" She jerked at the rope, and at the same instant Barbara screamed and tried to clutch at her.
Alex caught hold of her sister's ankles, felt Barbara's weight slip suddenly, and screamed aloud as a shriek and crash that seemed simultaneous proclaimed Barbara's fall backwards into the hall.
Cedric and Barbara in a confused struggling heap on the floor—doors opening upstairs and in the basement—the flying feet of the servants—all was an agonized nightmare to Alex until Barbara, limp and inert on Nurse's lap, suddenly began to scream and cry, calling out, "My back! my back!"
They hushed her at last, and Nurse carried her into the boudoir, which was the nearest room, and laid her down on the broad sofa. Then Alex became aware of a monotonous sound that had struck on her ear without penetrating to her senses ever since the accident happened.
"My spectacles are broken. You've broken my spectacles," reiterated a lamentable voice.
"You horrid, heartless little boy, Cedric! When poor Barbara—" Sobs choked her.
"I like that!" said Cedric. "When it was all you that made her fall at all—and break my spectacles."
"What's that?" said Nurse, miraculously reappearing. "All you, was it? I might have known it, you mischievous wicked child. Tell me what happened, this minute."