I giggled a little, it seemed so funny. “Who else?” I asked in despair.
“Miss Evelyn shut hand in motor door, it smash open,” he went on. “Mr. Kempwood new servant hurt hand to cut on bottle that is fall to floor and break. All is hospital.”
I said I was sorry for them, but started laughing. Ito joined me, and just at that moment Evelyn appeared “Have you seen Amy?” she asked. I said I hadn’t.
“Had to go to the doctor’s the minute she got up,” Evelyn explained. “She didn’t say a word to anyone about it, but was awfully game. It seems she got up to close a window last night--the wind was frightful, you know--and she was half asleep, I imagine, and fumbled it, for the window came down on her fingers and she was really hurt. . . . What, your hand too, Ito?” And she began to laugh with us.
But no one had the full appreciation of the joke that I had. It really was funny, although it did disturb me. I began to believe it was Jane. But I looked at the sample of cloth that had caught on my window-sill and wondered why Jane would wear that sort of a suit at night, and why she would go out on the balcony when she might have left more easily by my door? For while the balcony does lead past Amy’s room to the pantry window, my door is the first on the hall which belongs to the sleeping part of the apartment, and to leave by that would mean running no risks of encountering anyone’s wakefulness on return. I remembered the scratching noise and wondered whether I had heard it--what it meant? But I wasn’t to know for some time after that.
The next week was quiet, but the week after----! Words fail! There should be one word that implies hair standing on end, cold chills, shaking knees, goose-flesh, and a heart going about twenty-seven thousand hard whacks to the minute. I could use that word. I really could, and--I need it!
Chapter XVIII--Heart Affairs
About that time things began to stir for Christmas. Packages came in at all hours, and it was understood that they weren’t even to be felt, and that only the person to whom they were addressed could open them. The weather man was evidently in a good humour, for he predicted “dry, fair weather with light south winds,” and, of course, almost the greatest blizzard that New York had ever known appeared to make the landscape match those snow-scene Christmas-cards with shiny silver on them that drops off. And we had a splendid time.
The shops were simply gorgeous with their red and green decorations, and people carried packages, looked tired, but smiled. It was the greatest fun in the world to go out on Saturday mornings and scrunch through the snow to the subway, and then delve into the crowds, who laughed and pushed and hurried with such good nature. Amy and I could hardly wait for school to close. And in school notes simply flew, all of them containing confidences about the furs the writer hoped to get, or the ostrich-feather fan she knew she was going to get, having seen the long package on the hall table.
Aunt Penelope told us to make notes of what we wanted, and it was what we did the Saturday afternoon I met Mr. Apthorpe. Evelyn, who had not been awfully well since she had that bad cold, sat in the living-room with Amy and me, and we were enjoying being together.