“Is it possible?”
“True. He is the most modest of men, though, and he never speaks of his work as anything but insignificant. However, he has been appealed to, on behalf of some museum in Boston, to allow them to buy his collection when he has done with it. Of course, he isn’t going to do that; he will give it to them, instead; but he is going to put it into first-class order first, as if it weren’t now! and I am to make catalogues, take down notes, do anything and everything which will aid him. Now—don’t all speak at once!”
The mother opened her lips to express her praise, but her first words were drowned in a series of knockings as sudden as imperative.
“Rat-a-tat-tat! Tum-tum-tum!”
“For goodness’ sake! Who can be coming to visit us! At this hour, too!”
But when Roland reached the door and opened it, there was not a person to be seen. The moonlight fell in a broad sheet across the threshold and illuminated the sloping lawn before it.
“Rat-a-tat-tat!”
The sounds came from that side of the house. There was no doubting that, and Bonny joined her brother in the search.
But though they tried both front and rear doors, even the little side porch which led to the eastern rooms, there was no intruder visible, and they returned to the place they had left, only to hear the strange summons repeated almost continually for a full half-hour; after which, too disturbed to discuss their plans any further that night, the elder brother lifted the sleeping Robert from his corner of the hearth-rug, and followed the rest upstairs.
All night, at varying intervals, the uncanny rappings were repeated, till even the sensible mother began to feel that there was something supernatural about them, and to speculate if this were the reason that the former residents had found the house unsuitable and vacated it in such disgust.