“Said she was a silly goose, my dear,” cried the lady of the kitchen, with something like a snort, “and that she mustn’t eat so much for supper. I telled her, Master Waller, that she might go up and down the stairs and passages in the dead of the night for a hundred years, and she’d never see anything uglier than herself.”
“Ah, you wait,” said Bella.
“Did you hear or see anything, cook?” said Waller tentatively.
“I always go to bed to sleep, my dear.”
“But I mean this evening, just now?”
“No, my dear. I had had my tea, and was having a comfortable nap over the fire.”
“Why, Bella,” said Waller, laughing, “you must have heard one of those big bouncing rats that make their nests in the ivy, and come in through the windows in the night.”
“Ah, you may sneer at me, Master Waller, but I wouldn’t sleep up there alone of a night for crowns of gold. It was just as I said. It was just like one of those horrid things you see in the old books in master’s library, dragging dead bodies down the stairs.”
“Rat dragging a dead sparrow,” said Waller, and he hurried out of the kitchen to make his way out into the hall, where, consequent upon her fright, Bella had not lit the lamp, and then cautiously upstairs to the top attic, where he softly tried the door. He found it still fastened, and uttered a low signal agreed upon between the boys.
This was responded to by the click of the lock, and as Waller entered his fugitive guest went on tiptoe back to the old chair on which he passed so much of his time, and there was just faint light enough coming through the window to show that he was softly rubbing his back.