Now she paused for a moment to contemplate the sour, grim-looking sleeper—thinking her even more repulsive in sleep than when awake; and then laying one hand on her face, she uttered a low, hollow groan, destined for her ears alone.
Miss Sharpe, awakened from a deep sleep by the disagreeable and startling consciousness of an icy-cold hand on her face, started up in affright, and then she beheld an awful vision! A white specter by her bedside, all in fire, with flames encircling face and hands, and sparks of fire seemingly darting from eyes and mouth!
For one terrible moment she was unable to utter a sound for utter, unspeakable horror. Then, with one wild piercing shriek, she buried her head under the clothes, to shut out the awful specter. Such a shriek as it was! No hyena, no screech-owl, no peacock ever uttered so ear-splitting throat-rending a scream as that. No word or words in the whole English language can give the faintest idea of that terrible screech. Before its last vibration had died away on the air, every sleeper in the establishment, including madame herself, had sprung out of bed, and stood pale and trembling, listening for a repetition of that awful cry. From twenty beds in the dormitory, twenty little sleepers sprung, and immediately began to make night hideous with small editions of Miss Sharpe’s shriek. Gathering strength from numbers, twenty voices rose an octave higher at every scream, and yell, after yell, in the shrillest soprano, pierced the air, although not one of them had the remotest idea of what it was all about.
At the first alarm, Firefly had flitted swiftly and fleetly across the room, jumped into bed, and seizing the sponge, gave her face and hands a vigorous rubbing; and now stood screaming with the rest, not to say considerably louder than any of them.
“Oh, Miss Sharpe, get up! the house is on fire! we’re all murdered in our beds!” yelled Pet, going over and catching that lady by the shoulder with a vigorous shake.
And “Oh, Miss Sharpe! Oh, Miss Sharpe! Get up. Oh-oh-oh!” shrieked the terrified children, clustering round the bed, and those who could springing in and shaking her.
With a disagreeable sense of being half crushed to death, Miss Sharpe was induced to remove her head from under the clothes, and cast a quick, terrified glance around. But the coast was clear—the awful specter was gone.
And now another noise met her ears—the coming footsteps of every one within the walls of the establishment, from Mrs. Moodie down to the little maid-of-all-work in the kitchen. In they rushed, armed with bedroom-candlesticks, rulers, ink-bottles, slate-frames, and various other warlike weapons, prepared to do battle to the last gasp.
And then it was: “Oh, what on earth is the matter? What on earth is the matter? What is the matter?” from every lip.
Miss Sharpe sprung out of bed and fled in terror to the side of Mrs. Moodie.