‘Dear me!’ she murmured. ‘Of course I always knew it myself. But I hadn’t known that anyone else knew it.’
‘Knew what?’ asked Giles in a grumpy tone.
‘Somebody just said that I was the best-behaved girl in the town. I didn’t recognize the voice. But it’s true. So anyone might have said it.’
She pushed the shell across the table to her brother.
‘Your turn, Giles,’ she said. And she settled herself back in her chair with hands folded on her lap.
‘Look here,’ said her brother, suddenly rising and pushing back his chair, which made a scraping sound ... ‘Sh!’ he hissed. ‘Blow out the candle. Someone might come up. We are supposed to be asleep ... So! We can go to bed by moonlight. Now let’s get to the bottom of this thing. Have you noticed anything peculiar about the way the shell speaks, Anne?’
‘Certainly,’ said his sister. ‘For one thing, it always grows hot first.’
‘Yes,’ said the boy. ‘But did you notice that when you hold it, the voices only say things about you; and when I hold it they only say things about me. I think we have its secret now. Let’s try again.’
And so, for hours, talking in whispers, the children sat up in their night-clothes. While one was listening to the shell the other would listen for footsteps on the stairs, lest they should be caught at their work.
Anne heard her mother speak of her and a new frock for Easter she was making for her daughter; Giles heard his father speak again—this time of what the boy should be when he grew up; they both heard Doctor Seymour speak of them together; and each heard Luke the Lame Boy speak of them separately—apparently talking aloud to himself in his bed of straw.