See those huge, broad chimneys! Your breath comes quickly as you think of what may be behind them—goblins, elves, or blackest of cats, with their green, glaring eyes, ready to spring out and chill your blood with terror.
There is all this to be said about an old garret, and yet it seems to us peopled with the ghosts of the past, the rafters still reëchoing the childish shouts of the “long, long ago,” and the very old trunks telling their musty tale of the children who had once sported here, now old men and women, with tottering step and silvery locks.
Little thought our frolicsome party of all this. Drip, drip, drip, sounded the rain on the roof without, but child-life brought sunlight within, as holding tightly to Nan’s and Charlotte’s dresses, at first, they peer curiously and cautiously into all the shadowy corners, then, grown bolder, drag out from their hiding places the old trunks, dress themselves in pointed slippers, white wigs, laced bodice, ball dresses, and short clothes.
Jack rides astride an old crutch, whilst Artie, mounted on stilts, with curled wig and flying scarlet cloak, chases the screaming party into the darkest corners, or sends them climbing up the smooth shelves, where, on secure perch, they, with pillows, pelt their stilted pursuer, till his uncertain gait makes him cry out for mercy.
Charlotte and Nan may sit on high perch and gossip by the hour, for there are no disputes to be settled, wounds to be bound up, or new plays to be invented. The old garret supplies merriment enough, and the dinner-hour comes too soon, and the twilight gloom, stealing in through the oval windows, finds the little party very unwillingly groping down the dark, narrow staircase on their way to nursery tea.
Aunt Emma, sitting with Papa in the Library, a little later, hears, through the key-hole, snatches of a whispered conversation, and occasionally, loud tones.
“Oh, I can’t; you are the oldest. You ought to be the one.”
“Oh, pshaw! Don’t be such a spooney; it’s girls’ business to ask favors of women, and you know if I ask they’ll be sure to think it’s a lark.”
Papa looks comically at Aunt Emma, over the top of his paper, saying—