“Oh, well, you needn’t be so angry. Miss Bradley said she was sure it was, and that she knew the very stuff she used.”
“Miss Bradley had better try the stuff on her own wisp then,” retorted Mabin angrily.
“What is the house like inside, Mabin?” asked Ethel, who, though only twelve, was quite as great a gossip as there was in the parish.
“Why, there were chairs and tables in it, just as there are in every other house. What do you suppose it was like?”
“Mabin, don’t snub the children. Their interest is very natural,” said Mr. Rose peevishly from the other end of the room.
“Horsehair and mahogany, red moreen curtains, and a black marble clock on the mantelpiece,” said Mabin laconically.
“Why, that doesn’t sound very nice, that you should be in such a hurry to go there!” objected Ethel. “But perhaps the other rooms are better.”
“Very likely,” said Mabin.
But Mabin was really just a little bit alarmed at her own good fortune in getting her father’s consent so easily. She had a superstitious feeling, in spite of her reputed strength of mind, that anything worth having ought to be rather difficult to get. In spite of all her loyalty to her heroine, too, she thought more often than she wished about Rudolph’s ridiculous fancy that Mrs. Dale was watched. And although she always dismissed the thought by saying to herself that Rudolph was in love with the lovely widow, and therefore “fancied things,” she was anxious to meet him again and to learn whether he still thought that the fair tenant of “The Towers” was being watched.
In the mean time great confusion reigned at “Stone House.”