“Why, I’m a little girl, of course; but one who always wanted to see a fairy, till somebody told me there was none. Now I’m longing for this ‘spook’––that really is, ’cause so many, many have seen it––and I’m not even let to talk about him.”
Mrs. Trent shook her head regretfully.
“I’m afraid we’ve spoiled you among us, my darling. But, leaving these unexplained things to explain themselves at their proper time, suppose you go and see that all is ready in Mr. Sharp’s room? Wun Lung is still mooning by himself on the kitchen stoop and will do what you ask him.”
“They all do that, I infer,” commented Ninian, as the child hastened away, eager to serve all whom she loved.
“Yes, they do. It’s a delightful, but not, maybe, the wisest life for any girl to live. No playmates except her two small brothers, and no schooling that is at all regular or effective. I can’t imagine what Sobrante would be without her, and yet–––”
She paused and “Forty-niner” took up her sentence:
“It wouldn’t be Sobrante, mistress. That’s all. I, for one, couldn’t stay here and serve under any other body now except my captain;” and so saying, as if a shadow of the future fell upon him, the old man rose and went out, quite forgetting to say good-night.
Meanwhile, Jessica had found Wun Lung and also found him more than willing to go with her and perform even additional tasks, since by so doing he might have the comfort and safety of human presence. Fragments of talk had come to him in his kitchen concerning the apparitions which had 168 startled the whole countryside, during these past few days, and had received the strongest confirmation from his housemate, Pasqual. The latter believed, indeed, all that he himself heard and invented much more. He had grown to be afraid of his own shadow and now resorted to the men’s quarters on each and every occasion that presented, feeling a safety among them he could not feel at the “house” among a lot of women. Of course, his defection from duty entailed endless conflicts between himself and Aunt Sally, but since this resulted in nothing worse to the delinquent than a loss of some dainty food, he could put up with it. He was away now, bunking in Marty’s room, and Wun Lung sat alone, too afraid to go to bed, yet too uneasy to enjoy the beauty of the night. His sharp, black eyes peered here and there and everywhere, about the place; and when Jessica came running to him, in her noiseless moccasins, he jumped so high that his queue flew out at a right angle from his head, and he screeched:
“Oh, mly flathe’s, mly flathe’s!”