The bolts of the front door rattled, the hall-gas flashed up, sending a dim shaft of light through our transom; and a rumble of voices arose. Then the feet padded back, and there was some stir in Mrs. Pallinder's room.
"Oh, bother! Whatever it is, they'll never find it to-night in this mess," said Kitty vigorously. She sat up in bed. "Why don't they tell 'em to go home, and let us have a little peace and quiet?"
That simple expedient, however, did not seem to occur to anyone else. One of the girls awake in the next room called in that somebody must have lost some money or jewelry—"they couldn't be coming back for anything else." Again the feet padded down. The rumbling talk increased in volume. We distinctly heard Colonel Pallinder's voice, raised in explanation or argument, it was impossible to guess which; Mrs. Pallinder or someone in skirts went rustling along the hall. Apparently she paused to lean over the banister and listen a while. Lights began to start up elsewhere in the house; there was some movement among the men in their reservation; and old Mrs. Botlisch challenged raucously from her room at the end of the passage to know what was the matter. No one answered her, and after a moment there came a tap at our door. I got out of bed and opened it, full of uneasy wonder. There stood Mrs. Pallinder in a flowered blue silk tea-gown flung on anyway over her nightdress, and flowing about her in a huddle of lace and ribbons; she clutched it together at the throat; thin wisps of straw-coloured hair hung around her face. There was something indefinably alarming in the very haste and carelessness of her appearance, she who was always powdered and corseted to a fashion-plate correctness. She looked the scared ghost of her everyday self, immeasurably older, and a surprising likeness to Mrs. Botlisch came out on her harassed features.
"So sorry to disturb you, my dear," she said, with a tortured smile. "But can you wake Mazie—I want to speak to her."
"Nobody's sick, is there?" I asked, startled.
"Is it a telegram? It's not bad news for anyone, is it?" Kitty cried out apprehensively from the bed.
"No, no, it's nothing—really nothing at all," repeated Mrs. Pallinder—and this was so palpably false that even I could see through it. "Tell Mazie to come here, please, I want to speak to her."
"I'm coming," said Mazie drowsily, beginning to fumble in the dark for her slippers. And somebody, Muriel, I think, scrambled out of bed and lit the gas.
"You mustn't get up, don't any of you get up," said Mrs. Pallinder excitedly. "I tell you it's only Mazie I want to speak to. All of you go back to bed and go to sleep. Shut your doors and go to bed!" Her usually soft voice broke shrilly; she laid a hot trembling hand on my shoulder and pushed me back within the room. By this time, however, everybody was broad awake, staring, listening, and wondering. And Mrs. Botlisch began again:
"What's the matter? Is it fire? Mirandy, where are you? Is the house took fire?"