"Who, then?" Julia asked inflexibly.
The woman turned away with the cloth and shuffled hastily to the door.
"Wait," commanded Julia. "Who, then? There was no one else in your bedroom besides you, I suppose?"
Mrs Ragg hurriedly rejected the insinuation. She had had a pain in her chest, she remembered now, and had got up for remedies.
"Of course you heard me rapping on the wall and asking you to keep still? You heard that, at least, Mrs Ragg?"
"Yes," Mrs Ragg had heard that, certainly. She admitted the fact as if it had been a sin, with a look of actual horror upon her face.
"You heard?" asked Julia of me in a kind of triumph as we were alone. "There was not a sound through all the night. I never rapped upon the wall. Now, why is she lying? It may be nothing to you, but I mean to know."
Once more that morning, coming from our own rooms, dressed for walking, Julia tried the caretaker's door. Finding it fast, shook it, and turned from doing so to find Mrs Ragg, arrived on the scene in her felt shoes, standing behind her.
"Asking your pardon, miss, that is my room," the woman said; with a feeble kind of offence she went and put herself before the door.
"We have hired the cottage; I presume we have the right to look even into your room, if we deem it advisable," Julia said, with her haughtiest air. "So, you always keep your room locked, Mrs Ragg?"