I could make nothing of this.
Delia broke in.
“She come into the kitchen, white as flour she was, an' we went up to bed together. But scarce was we in bed when in come Jane, a-shakin' so that the candle-grease spattered all over the floor—you can see it for yourself this day-”
“And what had happened to Jane?” I asked with a sneer.
“I was a-layin' in bed, miss, in the dark, a bit wakeful, an' I heard, jes' back of me in the wall, somebody give a great sigh.”
I threw back my head, laughing. “You silly women! Is this all? Now, you don't mean to tell me that a draught of cold air, some falling plaster or a rat in the wall, are going to drive you away, in your old age, from a good home out into the world?”
“Wait a moment, miss,” cried Delia; “there's somethin' else.”
I waited. This something else seemed difficult to tell.
“You go ahead,” breathed Delia at last, nudging Annie, who gulped and set off with unusual rapidity.
“Robbie was sick last night, towards morn-in'. He had the night terrors, Mary said” (Mary was Robbie's nurse of whom at that time I had seen little), “an' she could n't get him quiet. He kep' a-talkin' about a lady with red hair”—they looked at me out of the corners of their eyes, and I felt my face grow hot—“a lady that stood over him—well! there's no tellin' the fancies of a nervous child like him! Anyways, Mary was after a hot-water bottle, an' we, bein' wakeful an' jumpy-like, was after helpin' her. Delia an' me, we went for a cup of hot milk, an' me an' Mary come upstairs from the kitchen again together an' went towards the nursery. Now, miss,”—again they cuddled up to one another, and Annie's throat gave a queer sort of click,—“jes' as we come to the turn of the passage, we seen somethin' come out o' the nursery, quick an' quiet, an' jump away down the hall an' out o' sight. Delia an' me, bein' scairt already, run away to our own room, but Mary she made fer the nursery as quick as she could, an' there she found Robbie all but in fits, so scairt he could n't scream, doublin' an' twistin', an' rollin' his eyes. But when she got him calmed down at last, why, it was the same story—a lady with red hair that come an' stood over him, an' stuck her face down closter an' closter—jes' a reg'lar nightmare—but we all three seen the thing come boundin' out o' his room.”