"You don't mind, do you, sister Sophia?" said Miss Judy, feeling, nevertheless, bound to apologize in respect for her sister. "It's too dark for any one passing to see. And it does make the back breadths so shiny to sit on them, no matter how lightly you try to sit down," she added, as if she could sit any other way, dear little atom of humanity!
Nine o'clock was their bedtime, winter and summer, although it must be said that Miss Sophia was always perfectly willing to go to bed earlier. That night they arose, as they always did, on the solemn, lonesome stroke of the court-house clock, and turned up their little rocking-chairs side by side, with the seats to the wall, tilting them so that the cat could not make a bed of the patchwork cushions, and thus be tempted from her plain duty of attending to the mice in the garret and the rats in the kitchen. The chairs being thus settled, as if for the saying of their prayers all night, Miss Judy bent down, and, taking both hands, rolled the cannon-ball out of the hollow which it had worn in the daytime, and sent it rumbling into the hollow which it had worn in the night-time. Shutting the door, she then dropped the wooden bar across it as a mere matter of routine propriety, and, after this was done, the little sisters began to undress with their backs to one another. When they were at last quite ready to retire, when Miss Sophia was in bed and Miss Judy was on the point of ascending by means of the chair, before blowing out the candle, there was some polite discussion and a good deal of hesitation whether or not to close the window at the foot of the bed. The ultimate decision was to leave it open, Miss Judy thinking this best on account of the night's being so warm, and the clouds having drifted so far round that there appeared little likelihood of rain before morning; and Miss Sophia's thinking that she thought as Miss Judy did, in this as in everything else. The window was accordingly left open, and this final question being settled, the little sisters laid themselves down side by side, and bade one another a formal good night, and wished one another pleasant dreams, and were soon sleeping the sleep of gentle innocence and of sweet peace with the whole world.
But while they slept it happened unluckily that the clouds drifted back to the rain quarter. An ominous murmur arose louder and louder, coming nearer and nearer; the branches of the old elm suddenly swept the mossy old roof, and about midnight the tempest broke in its utmost fury. At the same instant two little nightcaps with wide ruffles lifted themselves from the pillows, unseen and unheard by each other in the darkness of the night and the crash of the storm. Both the little sisters were terrified. They were always very much afraid of a storm, and this one was terrifying indeed. But love gives courage to the most timid. And they were very, very tender of one another, these two gentle, little old sisters. Miss Judy thought of Miss Sophia's rheumatism, with the wind furiously beating the rain clear across the room, almost to the very bed. Miss Sophia thought of Miss Judy's heart trouble, which she had had a touch of that very night, and she dreaded, for her sister's sake, lest the lightning begin to flash, as the thunder boomed nearer and louder. But the loving are the daring, and each forgot her own terror in fear for the other. At precisely the same moment the two little old sisters began to get up and to leave their opposite sides of the high bed. Miss Judy, usually much quicker of movement than Miss Sophia, now moved so slowly in order not to disturb her, that she was longer than ever before in reaching the floor by way of the chair. Miss Sophia, on the other hand, hurried down the dwarf staircase backward, like a fleeing crab, fairly driven by alarm and her loving concern for Miss Judy. So that—still utterly unaware of one another's being awake, much less astir, such was the uproar of the blast and the downpour of the rain—they crept tremblingly round the opposite corners at the foot of the bed, in the blackness of the room, with tightly shut eyes, with outstretched arms guarding their faces, and thus ran into violent collision.
Neither Miss Judy nor Miss Sophia could ever recall very clearly what happened after that. The neighbors remembered only hearing, above the tumult of the tempest, blood-curdling screams and shrieks of fire, and murder, and theft, in tones which none of them recognized. The Oldfield people, men, women, and children, alarmed and panic-stricken, sprang from their beds, and rushed to the rescue through the storm and darkness in their nightclothes. The doctor alone was dressed, as he had not gone to bed, having just got home from the country. It was he—thus already afoot—who led all the rest, catching up his lantern, which was still lighted, and clubbing his umbrella for a weapon as he ran, as much alarmed as any one of all those who were rushing to the rescue. A single kick from his great boot shattered the wooden bar and burst open the front door. The outcry continuing, led him and those who followed close upon his heels to the bedchamber. When he held up the lantern, there stood the little sisters, locked together in a death-grip and quite out of their senses with fright. Their gentle little hands, which had never touched one another nor any living creature save with kindness, were fiercely clutched in each other's gray hair, hooked like bird-claws through the shreds of their tattered nightcaps; their mild eyes, which had seen only love in all their tranquil lives, were still closed against the first horrors which they had ever encountered; their soft voices, which had never before been harsher than the cooing of doves, now shrilled by wordless terror, still pierced the roar of the tempest with ceaseless shrieking. Thus it was that all the horrified neighbors found them. The doctor never knew whether he was laughing or crying when he picked them both up—one on each arm—and put them to bed as though they had been his own babies.
Dear little Miss Judy! Poor little Miss Sophia! That night comes back to most of us with a smile that is tenderly close to tears.
XVII
LOVE'S AWAKENING
But there never was any open smiling over the events of that memorable night. Miss Judy herself regarded what had happened far too gravely to allow of its seeming trivial or amusing to any one else. Indeed, she so plainly shrank from all mention of it that it was rarely spoken of at all. Everybody saw how pale she turned whenever it was mentioned, and how she pressed her little hand to her heart. So that, as no one ever knowingly gave the little lady pain, the memory soon dropped into kind oblivion.
The only reminder of it was the more frequent pressure of Miss Judy's hand to her heart, which had always been a weak, soft, fluttering little thing, and a new paleness of her sweet face which merely made its delicate blushes more lovely. The shock had been very great, there could be no doubt of that, and there was not much likelihood of her forgetting it; but it was ever Miss Judy's way to put painful things behind her as quickly as possible, and to turn her face toward sweetness and peace as naturally as a flower turns toward the sunlight.