“It just seems as if it was fixed to be convenient for me,” she said to herself; “and now I can try which is the heaviest one I can pull. I know I could not take those largest downstairs, but I think I could one of the middlings.”
But, after various trials, she found to her great disappointment, that she could by no means move even one of the “middlings;” and was at last forced to content herself with a small black leather trunk, in which she thought she would put some of her own and Bessie’s clothes.
“For a pack in time saves nine,” said Maggie to herself; “and even if it does not hold much, this little trunk is a better beginning than nothing.”
Having fixed upon this prize, she contrived with some trouble to drag it from the room, and push and pull it to the head of the stairs. But here a new difficulty arose. She could by no means lift the trunk and carry it down: small as it was for the amount of packing she wished to do, it was quite too heavy for her little strength; and though for one moment she thought of pushing it over the edge of the top stair, and allowing it to slide down by its own weight, she soon reflected this would not do.
“For it will just go and smash itself all to pieces, I suppose, and then make a horrid noise to wake the people all up,” she said again, feeling rather vexed with the innocent trunk. “Oh! I know what I’ll do: I’ll go in front of it and pull it down very gently, one step at a time.”
But in spite of all the pains she took, the trunk seemed to Maggie to make the most outrageous noise, sliding over each stair with a grating sound, and coming down from the edge of one to another with a thump and a bang, which all her efforts could not silence. She was soon heartily sorry that she had ever touched it; but she must go on now, for she could not possibly pull it up again, and if she left her hold of it, it would go tumbling headlong to the bottom.
However, she took heart of grace again by the time she had reached the foot of the top flight, for no one seemed to have been disturbed; the servants having all gone down stairs, and the boys, who slept in the third story, being sound sleepers. So she concluded to go on and not have all her pains thrown away; but she had gone only two or three steps on the second flight, her troublesome prize bumping after her, when she heard her father’s voice from below.
“What are you busy with there, Patrick?” he said. “You are disturbing Mrs. Bradford, and will wake the children. Leave it till later in the day.”
“O papa!” said Maggie, feeling rather guilty, and very much mortified, “it’s not Patrick, but me;” and as she spoke, she appeared round the turn of the stairs, while her attention being for the moment diverted, the trunk slid after her with a bang which seemed to jar the house.
“You, my daughter!” said Mr. Bradford, coming up to where Maggie stood; “and what are you doing here at this time in the morning?” and he looked down in great surprise at the small figure whose cheeks matched her scarlet dressing-gown, and whose curls were tossed and tumbled in the wildest confusion.