“She’s had a fright, my dear. I don’t quite know yet what it all means. She thinks she’s seen something, but I daresay it’s only one of them owls.”
“Oh, no, no, no, no!” sobbed Bella, “it was something dreadful—something dreadful!”
“Well, well, then, my dear, tell us what it is,” said Martha, in her most motherly way, “and it will do you good.”
“Oh, it was dreadful!” moaned Bella. “I remembered that I had forgotten to shut the window in master’s chamber, which I opened this afternoon to let the sun in and get the room aired, and without stopping to fetch a light I went up in the dark, and then—and then—Oh dear! Oh dear! Oh dear! Oh dear!”
“Take another sniff of the feathers, my dear, and have a good sneeze, and that will relieve you.”
“Oh, do a-done, cook, and throw the nasty thing behind the fire. I was just coming out again into the gallery, when I heard something horrid.”
“Heard?” cried Waller excitedly. “Then you didn’t see it?”
“No, Master Waller. I only heard it walking. Somewhere up by your room—I mean your den, as you call it. And then all in the dark there come bumpity bump all down the stairs, and I shruck and shruck again, and ran for my life.”
“My!” said cook. “Was it as bad as that? But what was it, my dear?”
“Oh, I don’t know, cook. Something dreadfully horrid, and it was dragging a dead body all down the stairs, and knocking the back of the head hard on every step.”