"Thaat's it," she cried emphatically. "Where was aal my wits, I wonder, thaat I never remembered they? Now doan't you go for to deny it, Rosaline Bell: you have heared they Seven Whistlers, and gashly things they be."
Another pause. A shiver. And then Rosaline slowly lifted her white face.
"Yes," she answered. "The Seven Whistlers." And the avowal struck such consternation on her hearers, although the suggestion had first come from them, that they became dumb.
"Father heard them, you know," went on Rosaline, a look of terror in her eyes, and a dreamy, far-off sound in her voice. "Father heard them. And they mean ill-luck."
"They bode death: as some says," spoke Nancy Tomson, lowering her voice to an appropriate key.
"Yes," repeated Rosaline, in a tone of sad wailing. "Yes: they bode death. Oh, mother! mother!"
But now, Mrs. Bell, although given, like her neighbours, to putting some faith in the Seven Whistlers: for example is contagious: was by no means one to be overcome with the fear of them. Rather was the superstition regarded by her as a prolific theme for gossip, and she altogether disapproved of the men's making it an excuse for idleness. Had she heard the Whistlers with her own ears, it would not have moved her much. Of course she did not particularly like the Whistlers; she was willing to believe that they were in some mysterious way the harbingers of ill-luck; and the discomfort evinced by her husband on Sunday night, when he returned home after hearing the sounds, had in a degree imparted discomfort to herself. But, that any one should be put into a state of terror by them, such as this now displayed by Rosaline, she looked upon as absurd and unreasonable.
"Don't take on like that, child!" she rebuked. "You must be silly. They don't bode your death: never fear. I'll warm you a cup o' pea-soup. There's some left in the crock."
She bustled into the back-kitchen for the soup and a saucepan. Rosaline kept her head down: deep, laboured breathings agitated her. Nancy Tomson stood looking on, her arms folded in her check apron.
"Whereabouts did ye hear they Whistlers, Rosaline?" she asked at length.