Madge walked home with an added feeling of elation. She laughed at the girl's pretension to what almost amounted to prophetic insight--yet wondered if there might not be something in what she said. At any rate it was nice to be believed in, even by Miss Parkins. She felt that she had done the young woman an injustice. A publican's daughter, after all, is flesh and blood. If the book succeeded, should opportunity offer, she would place it upon public record that Clara Parkins had foretold its success--which would be fame for Clara. She smiled at her own conceit. The possibility that she might one day become an important person only loomed on the horizon since the advent of that note in the morning.
Immersed in such thoughts, almost unwittingly she arrived at Clover Cottage. Inserting her latchkey in the keyhole, she turned and opened the door. Almost as soon as she did so, it was thrust violently back on her, and banged in her face. She was so startled that, for a second or two, she stared at the closed door as if in doubt as to what had really happened. She had been, in imagination, so far away that it required positive effort on her part to bring herself back to earth.
"Well," she muttered, below her breath, "that's cool. I wonder who did that. Perhaps it was the wind."
She did not stay to consider how the wind could have behaved in such an eccentric manner. She gave her key another twist, and the door a push. But the key refused to act, or to move, in the direction required, and the door stood still. This, under the circumstances, singular behaviour of the key and the door, seemed to rouse her to a clearer perception of the situation. She gave the key a further twist, exerting all her strength.
"What is the matter? It turned easily enough just now."
It would not turn then, try how she might, and the door would not budge.
"Can the catch have fallen? I don't see how; it has never done anything of the kind before. I wonder if some one's having a joke with me; perhaps Ella has returned."
Acting on the supposition, though it was two hours in advance of the time at which Miss Duncan might be generally expected, she knocked at the door. None answered. She knocked again--louder. If Ella was having a jest at her expense it was hardly to be expected that she would put an end to the joke by answering her first summons. She knocked again and again--without result.
"This is charming--to be locked out of my own house is not what I expected."
She drew back, in order to survey the premises. Nothing was to be seen.