If Mrs. Tarnley was drinking her tea alone at this hour of night and talking so to herself, she was doing that she had never done before, thought the curious little girl; and she must be a-going mad. From this latter apprehension, however, she was relieved by hearing some one cough. It was not Mrs. Tarnley, who suspended her story, however. But there was an unmistakable difference of tone in this cough, and old Mildred said more distinctly something about a cure for a cough which she recommended.
Then came an answer in an odd drawling voice. The words she could not hear, but there could no longer be any doubt as to the presence of a stranger in the kitchen.
Lilly Dogger was rather frightened, she did not quite know why, and listened without power to form a conjecture. It was plain that the person who enjoyed old Mildred’s hospitality was not her master, nor her mistress, nor old Dulcibella Crane.
As she listened, and wondered, and speculated, sleep overtook her once more, and she quite forgot the dialogue, and the kitchen, and Mildred Tarnley’s tea, and went off upon her own adventures in the wild land of dreams.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE LADY HAS HER TEA.
“You suffers dreadful, ma’am,” said Mildred Tarnley. “Do you have them toothaches still?”
“’Twas not toothache—a worse thing,” said the stranger, demurely, who, with closed eyes, and her hand propping her head, seemed to have composed herself for a doze in the great chair.
“Wuss than toothache! That’s bad. Earache, mayhap?” inquired Mrs. Tarnley, with pathetic concern, though I don’t think it would have troubled her much if her guest had tumbled over the precipice of Carwell Valley and broken her neck among the stones in the brook.
“Pain in my face—it is called tic,” said the lady, with closed eyes, in a languid drawl.
“Tic? lawk! Well, I never heard o’ the like, unless it be the field-bug as sticks in the cattle—that’s a bad ailment, I do suppose,” conjectured Mrs. Tarnley.