“No, ma’am, it ain’t open, the doors were papered over, this room and hers, as I told you, when the rooms was done up.”
The old soldier sighed and whispered—
“My head is very bad, make no noise, dear, don’t move the tray, don’t touch anything—leave me to myself, and I’ll sleep till eleven o’clock to-morrow morning; but go out softly, and then, no noise, for my sleep,” groaned this huge woman, “is a bird’s sleep—a bird’s sleep, and a pin dropping wakes me, a mouse stirring wakes me—oh—oh—oh. That’s all.” Glad to be dismissed on these easy terms, Mildred Tarnley bid her softly good-night, having left her basket with her sal volatile, and all other comforts, on the table at her bedside.
And so, softly she stole on tiptoe out of the room, and closed her door, waiting for a moment to clear her head, and be quite sure that the “Dutchwoman,” whom they very much hated and feared, was actually established in her bed-room at Carwell Grange.
CHAPTER XXXI.
NEWS FROM CRESSLEY COMMON.
A pretty medley was revolving in old Mildred’s brain as she stood outside this door, on the gallery. The epileptic old soldier, the puce gros de Naples, Tom on outpost duty on Cressley Common—had he come back? Charles Fairfield, perhaps, in the house, and that foolish poor young wife in her room, in the centre, and herself the object of all this manœuvring and conspiring; quite unconscious. Mildred had a good many wires to her fingers just now; could she possibly work them all and keep the show going?
She was listening now, wondering whether Master Charles had arrived, wondering whether the young lady was asleep, and wondering, most of all, why she had been fool enough to meddle in other people’s affairs. “What the dickens was it to her if they was all in kingdom come? If Mildred was a roastin’ they wouldn’t, not one of ’em, walk across the yard there, to take her off the spit—la, bless you, not a foot.”
Mildred was troubled about many things. Among others, what was the meaning of those oracular appeals of the Dutchwoman in which she had seemed to know something of the real state of things.
Down went Mildred Tarnley, softly still, for she would not risk waking Alice, and at the foot of the second staircase she paused again.
All was quiet, she peeped into Tom’s little room, under the staircase. It was still empty. Into the kitchen she went, nothing had been stirred there.