Edina: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"I say," cried Tomson at this juncture, "what's amiss with Rosaline?"

During the above conversation, Rosaline had stood at the dresser, wiping the plates one by one, and keeping her back to the company, so that they did not see her face. But it chanced that Tomson went to the fire to light his pipe, just as Rosaline's work came to an end. As she crossed the kitchen to the staircase, Tomson met her and had full view of her. The man stared after her in surprise: even when she had disappeared up the stairs and shut the door behind her, he still stood staring; for he had never seen in all his life a face to equal it for terror. It was then that he put his question to Mrs. Bell.

"Didn't your wife tell you what it was that frightened her, Ben Tomson?" was the dame's query.

"My wife have said ne'er a word to me since yesterday dinnertime, save to call me a vool," confessed Tomson. "Her temper be up. Rosaline do look bad, though!"

"She heard the Seven Whistlers last night," explained Mrs. Bell. "It did fright her a'most to death.

"What!—they Whistlers here again laast night?" cried Tomson, his eyes opening with consternation.

Dame Bell nodded. "Your wife and me were sitting here, Ben Tomson, waiting for Rosaline to come in, and wondering why Granny Sandon kept her so late. I opened the door to see if I could see her coming across the Plain—or Bell, either, for the matter o' that—and there she was, leaning again' the wall outside with terror. We got her indoors, me and Nancy Tomson, and for some time could make nothing of her; she was too frighted to speak. At last she told us she had heard the Seven Whistlers as she was coming over the Plain."

But now this statement of Mrs. Bell's unconsciously deviated from the strict line of truth. Rosaline had not "told" them that she heard the Seven Whistlers on the Plain. When her mother suddenly accused her of having heard the Whistlers, and was backed in the suggestion by Nancy Tomson, poor Rosaline nodded an affirmative, but she gave it in sheer despair. She could not avow what had really frightened her; and the Seven Whistlers—which she had certainly not heard—served excellently for an excuse. The two women of course adopted the explanation religiously, and they had no objection to talk about it.

"They Whistlers again!" resumed Tomson, in dismay. "Ross, he's raging just like a bear this morning, threatening us weth law and what not; but he caan't expect us to go down and risk our lives while they boding Whistlers be glinting about."

"There, never mind they Whistlers," broke in Mrs. Bell, who sometimes fell into the native dialect. "Where's Bell got to? that's what I want to know."