She turned down the bedclothes with a stiff, nervous hand. “They seem pretty clean,” she said at last; “they mayn’t perhaps have been washed very lately, but I think they must have dusted them. I can only see one crumb and a used wax match.”
The account was not encouraging, but it might have been worse. Of the sufferings of that night, however, as much cannot be said. After our occupancy of that bed, not one used match, but twenty, might have been collected. In explanation of this circumstance, I will merely quote one line from the charming duet for bass and tenor in The Lily of Killarney—
To light the way, to flea my love.
CHAPTER VI.
FROM the indications given in the last chapter, the intelligent reader will probably have gathered the fact that we did not sleep well.
“It isn’t the little bit they ates I begridges them,” quoted my cousin, as in one of the long watches of the night she wearily lit her candle for the nineteenth time, “but ’tis the continial thramplin’ they keeps up.”
Even when the greater part of these foes was either gorged or slain, the sleep that hummed its mellow harmonies in the loft over our heads held far from us, tossing and stifling among feathers and flock pillows. It must have been about two a.m., and I had just, by various strategies, induced myself to go to sleep, when I was once more awakened, this time by a convulsive clutch of my arm.
“Don’t stir!” whispered my second cousin, in a voice so low that it felt like one of my own dreams, “but listen!”
A stealthy sound, as of a slow, barefooted advance, crept to us, buried though we were in the perfumed depths of the flock pillows.
“Whatever it is, it came out from under the bed,” breathed my cousin, “and it has gone twice round the room—looking for our money, I expect!”