“Mayhap it sounds so afore you know what it is. Let me give you young gentlemen a drop o’ my home-made cowslip wine.”
She had taken the decanter of wine and some glasses off the sideboard with her long arms, before we could say Yes or No. We are famous for cowslip wine down there, but this was extra good. Tod took another glass of it, and got up to go.
“Don’t be frighted if you hear the noise again, now that you know what it is,” she said, quite in a motherly way. “For my part I wish some o’ the birds was shot. They don’t do no good to nobody.”
“As there is not any house about here, except this, the thought naturally arises that the noise may be inside it—until you know to the contrary,” remarked Tod.
“I wish it was inside it—we’d soon stop it by wringing all their necks,” cried she. “You can listen,” she added, suddenly going into the hall and flinging wide every door that opened from it and led to the different passages and rooms. “Go to any part of the house you like, and hearken for yourselves, young gentlemen.”
Tod laughed at the suggestion. The passages were all still and cold, and there was nothing to hear. Taking up the candle, she lighted us to the front-door. Outside stood the woman-servant Eunice, a basket on her arm, and just about to ring, Mrs. Radcliffe inquired if she had heard any noise.
“Only the shrieking birds up there,” she answered readily. “They be in full cry to-night.”
“They’ve been startling these gentlemen finely.”
“There bain’t nothing to be startled at,” said the woman, roughly, turning a look of contempt upon us. “If I was the master I’d shoot as many as I could get at; and if that didn’t get rid of ’em, I’d cut the trees down.”