“Who is down there with you?”
“Nobody. I’m down here with Roland. The honor of this exploit is his.”
“Come up to bed, both of you. You’ll take cold.”
“Oh! we’re all gooseflesh now, both of us. But Roland is dressed, and so am I; that is—partly.”
“We can do nothing about this matter to-night. I will see Mr. Brook to-morrow and get an explanation. Else we will make a business of investigation for ourselves. Come, both of you, at once.”
“Motherkin’s voice sounds kind of chattery, too, doesn’t it? But we had better mind her promptly. Good-night.”
“What’s the use of going to bed, Mother? Cannot I sit up?” pleaded Roland, as he reached the upper landing of the stairs.
“You will be asleep in five minutes, if you make up your mind to it. The noises have continued now for some hours, and nobody is the worse for them. Good-night.”
It was a rather serious party which gathered about the breakfast-table, for even to nineteenth-century folk the idea of living in a “haunted house” had its drawbacks. But as nothing had been known of the night’s disturbance by little Robert, nothing was now mentioned in his presence, and the talk took up again the interrupted “division of labor.”
“Roland is to be the farmer, of course. He is to raise as much as he can in his little greenhouse, or cold frame it will be this spring. Oh! I forgot, I didn’t mean to tell his part for him. Fire ahead yourself, Roland!”