"Oh, no! no!" said Redbud.
"What shall I tell 'um, Miss," said the servant?
"Oh, I can't go down—tell Verty that—"
"She'll be down in a minute," finished Fanny.
"No, no, I must not!"
"You shall!"
"Fanny—!"
"Come, no nonsense, Reddy! there! I hear his voice—oh, me! my goodness gracious!"
These sudden and apparently remarkable exclamations may probably appear mysterious and without reason to the respected readers who do us the honor to peruse our history; but they were in reality not at all extraordinary under the circumstances, and were, indeed, just what might have been expected, on the generally accepted theories of cause and effect.
In a single word, then, the lively Miss Fanny had uttered the emphatic words, "Oh, me!—my goodness gracious!" because she had heard upon the staircase the noise of a masculine footstep, and caught sight of a masculine cocked-hat ascending;—which phenomenon, arguing again upon the theories of cause and effect, plainly indicated that a head was under the chapeau—the head of one of the opposite sex.