It seems only yesterday, but some years have passed now since we used to lie in bed of a cold, dark winter’s morning, and listen to the prolonged rattle of the sweep’s brush upon some chimney-pot far on high, and then hear the miserable little fellow’s doleful “halloo, halloo, halloo,” by way of announcement that he had achieved his task, and had head and shoulders right out of the pot. And it seems only yesterday, too, that, by special favour, our household Betty allowed me to descend and see the sweeps do the kitchen chimney, when I stood trembling in presence of our blackened visitors and the smoke-jack, and then saw the great black pall fastened before the fireplace with three forks, when the sooty boy covered his head and face with a cap, grinning diabolically at me before he eclipsed his features, and then by the light of the blackened tallow candle I saw him disappear behind the cloth.
That was quite enough, and I could stand no more, but turned and fled upstairs, feeling convinced that he would never come down again.
And it really was but yesterday, comparatively speaking, when, in the depth of winter, a few days before Christmas, Mrs Scribe and self were staying at a friend’s house in Lower Bleak Street, Grimgreen Square, close by Glower Street, North. I had a cold whose effect was to make me insufferably hot and feverish, and as I lay in bed, somewhere about what seemed the middle of the night, by which I mean the middle of one’s sleeping night, not twelve o’clock, when one has just plunged into bed—about the middle of the night, while I was dreaming of being where there were rows upon rows of lights, through which I was being somehow propelled at the risk of being dashed against an indescribable object, while my hands were apparently swelling out to a large size, and I was in a wild, semi-delirious dream, from which it was a charity to wake me, I felt my arm roughly grasped, and a well-known voice whispered in my ear—
“Are you awake?”
As soon as I could collect myself and make sure that I really was in the required state, I said, “Yes.” But that was not until some few seconds had passed.
“Only listen, dear,” there’s some one in the room, the voice whispered again in an agitated manner.
“Pooh, nonsense,” I said perversely, “I know that. There’s been some one all night.” And then I stopped short, for though I knew that I had fastened the door when we came to bed, I could hear a gentle rustling noise, as of some one in a silk dress slowly gliding about the room very slowly, and then coming to a stop, and apparently agitating the robe, when again the rustling began, and it appeared just opposite the foot of our bed.
“What shall we do?” gasped Mrs Scribe in a smothered voice, from beneath the clothes.
I didn’t know, so of course I could not tell her. I knew what I ought to do, which was to have leaped boldly out of bed, and grappled the intruder, but then the rustling was like that of a silk dress, and if a ghost, of course it was of the feminine gender, and one could not help studying decorum.
“Hadn’t you better get up and see what it is?” said Mrs S, accompanying the remark with a touch from her elbow.