It was very near midnight when at last they filed up-stairs to bed. The fire was out, after having played its part so efficiently as to render it necessary to open to its widest extent every door and window in the cottage. It was a rather silent crowd that climbed the stairs. The girls went to their respective rooms without any of the laughter and gay chatter which usually characterized the hour of retiring. Peggy said to herself that they were all too tired to talk.
But Amy knew better. While Peggy shared Dorothy’s quarters, and Priscilla and Claire occupied the room next to Aunt Abigail’s, Amy and Ruth were tucked into a snug little box of a bedroom on the opposite side of the hall. As Amy hastily lighted the candle on the little table at the side of the bed, she turned a perturbed face on her roommate.
“Oh, why did I let her do it?” she exclaimed tragically. “Why did I ever listen? I know I’m not going to sleep a wink to-night.”
“Why, Amy, what nonsense!” Ruth remonstrated, but she was aware that her heartbeats had quickened. It was one thing to listen to Aunt Abigail’s harrowing recitals, in a room made cheerful by firelight and companionship, and another to recall the same horrors in comparative solitude. “You’re not foolish enough to believe in things of that sort,” Ruth remarked, with a brave effort to maintain her air of superiority.
“No, I’m not foolish enough to believe in them,” Amy acknowledged, “but I’m foolish enough so they scare me dreadfully. Oh, dear! Won’t I be glad when it is to-morrow!”
She repeated the wish a little later, when both girls were in bed, and Ruth answered her a trifle tartly that it was very nearly to-morrow, and that she wanted to go to sleep some time before morning, if Amy didn’t. Then for a matter of thirty minutes silence reigned. The hour was late and the girls were tired. In spite of her gloomy prophecy, Amy was surprised and pleased to find a delicious drowsiness creeping over her.
All at once she sat up in bed. “Ruth,” she exclaimed in a frightened whisper, “what was that?”
“What was what?”
“That rustling noise.”
“O, Amy!” Ruth’s whispered exclamation conveyed an extraordinary amount of exasperation for three syllables. And then as Amy remained up-right, staring intently into the darkness, Ruth was conscious of a curious pricking of the scalp. For she herself distinctly heard the sound to which Amy referred, and, truth to tell, it was not unlike the rustling of the unseen garments which had figured so frequently in the stories to which they had lately been listening.