"No, it ain't, ma. Shut up, will you?" said Mrs. Pallinder roughly. Astonishment struck us all dumb; never before had we heard her speak so to the old woman. Mazie, looking very long and limp in her white gown with strands of black hair sailing down her back, came to the door, and her mother dragged her outside, slamming it on us sharply. More low-voiced confusion ensued. Mazie gave a high exclamation, and Mrs. Pallinder hushed her violently. All the girls congregated in the room, in wild array of curl-papers and "Mother Hubbards." In the hall one of the men could be heard asking what was the matter, and excuse him, but could he be of any use?
"What on earth do you suppose has happened?" said Kitty, no longer out of temper, but on edge with curiosity; before anyone could offer a guess, Mazie came back. She did not look at any of us; she did not speak; she walked straight to the bureau in her room, took a package from its top drawer, and walked straight out again. For so simple an act it was the strangest bit of pantomime that can be imagined; so quick and purposeful were her movements in contrast to her ordinary languor, that no one had a chance to ask questions, even if we had dared; but I believe we were all a little frightened by the unexplained change in her bearing and her mother's. There was a controlled menace about the girl; she dominated us to the last; and when she went out, closing the door not fiercely as her mother had done, but with a resolute gentleness, we should not have been surprised to hear the key turn in the lock. The scene was not without its ludicrous aspects; there we were eight or ten night-gowned girls, shivering in the draughts, perched here and there amid the rich, fantastic disorder of that room, while mystery whispered in the hall outside. We did not talk; we were all openly listening, and such was the tension that when Muriel said suddenly: "There's a carriage coming!" everyone in the room started violently. A girl by the window put the blind aside and peeped out cautiously. "Why, there's one here already!" she said, and then: "There're two men in the other; they're just getting out——"
Upon the words, a strange voice, a man's voice, cried out in the hall below, with mingled anger and surprise, "Damnation!" it shouted, "What d'ye mean by this?" Mrs. Pallinder screamed harshly like a strangling animal, and with a truly melodramatic fitness, the door bell began furiously to ring!
That was too much for us. I don't know who was first in the hall; it seemed as if we were all there at once. The immediate person I saw was Mazie standing against the opposite wall. She had snatched up some kind of shawl or blanket and wrapped it around her over her nightgown; her face was white, but she was laughing in a hysterical way. At the head of the stair Mrs. Pallinder clung to the newel. From the hall there arose a clamour of excited voices, punctuated by peal after peal on the bell like the knocking at the castle-gate in the awful scene of the murder from "Macbeth." The door of Mrs. Botlisch's room was open, and there was the old woman sitting up in bed, a tremendous figure in her red flannel nightdress, roaring out questions to which no one paid any attention.
"Oh, do go back, girls, do go back, here 're the men!" said Mazie, still giggling feebly.
"Men!" cried her grandmother, catching the word. "Time enough! I'd like to see someone with some sense. Where's that Taylor feller?"
"Taylor—what Taylor?" said I, bewildered. I thought, for an instant, the old woman had suddenly gone crazy, and wanted to be measured for a pair of breeches. Anything seemed possible in the hurly-burly.
"Here I am," said J. B., presenting himself in trousers and a night-shirt, one red sock and one polka-dotted blue one, and his suspenders trailing in the rear. "He went the kilt one better, didn't he?" said Kitty, recalling his appearance later, and she wondered what Muriel thought. But if the men were a weird crew, what were we?
"Here I am," said J. B. "What's the matter? Can I do anything?" He afterwards said that everything under the sun that could have happened went through his mind, from fire and murder to the reappearance of Arthur Gwynne's ghost—everything that could have happened, except the inconceivable thing that had happened!
Mazie ran to the banisters. "Do somebody open the door! Can't you hear the bell?" she screamed.