“For Miss Christie, with the sincere apologies of some one who would not willingly have offended her for the whole world.”
I did not know the writing, but I knew whom it was from. I think, if I had been quite sure that no one could have seen me, I should have raised the note to my lips, I was so happy. But, though I could see no one, the fact of the basket arriving so surely at my secret haunt seemed to argue the existence of a supernatural agency in dealing with which one could not be too discreet; so I only put the note into my pocket and returned to the house with my flowers. I put them in water as soon as I had sneaked upstairs to my room with them.
The supernatural agency could not follow me there, so I slept that night with the note under my pillow.
CHAPTER VIII.
“You are getting pale again, my dear child,” said Mr. Rayner to me the very next morning—he met me, at the foot of the stairs, dressed for my walk with Haidee. “We must find some means of bringing those most becoming roses back to your cheeks again. You work too hard at those self-imposed evening tasks, I am afraid.”
“Oh, no, indeed I don’t, Mr. Rayner! I am getting very lazy; I haven’t done anything for two or three nights.”
The fact was that I had felt too languid even to sit down and write, and had wasted the last two evenings listlessly turning over the pages of a book I did not read.
“Ah, then you want change of air! Now how to give it you without letting you go away—for we can’t spare you even for a week! You will think me a magician if I procure you change of air without leaving this house, won’t you, Miss Christie? Yet I think I can manage it. You must give me a few days to look about for my wand, and then, hey, presto, the thing will be done!”
I laughed at these promises, looking upon them as the lightest of jests; but the very next day I met a workman upon the staircase, and Mr. Rayner asked me mysteriously at dinner whether I had seen his familiar spirit about, adding that the spirit wore a paper cap and a dirty artisan’s suit, and smelt of beer. That spirit pervaded the house for two days. I met him in the garden holding very unspiritual converse with Jane; I met him in my room taking the measure of my bedstead; I met him in the passage carrying what looked like thin sheets of tin and rolls of wall-paper, and I heard sounds of heavy boots in the turret above my room. Then I saw no more of him; but still there were unaccustomed sounds over my head, sounds of footsteps and knocking, and I met sometimes Jane and sometimes Sarah coming out of a door which I had never known unlocked before, but which I now discovered led to a narrow staircase that I guessed was the way to the turret.
On the fourth day, when I went to my room to dress for tea, I found it all dismantled, the bed and most of the furniture gone, and little Jane pulling down my books from their shelf and enjoying my discomfiture with delighted giggles, not at all disconcerted at being caught taking an unheard-of liberty.