"Perhaps I'd better try the back door. Since the front seems hermetically closed, the back may be open for a change."
But it was not. She rattled at the handle; shook the door; rapped at the panels with her knuckles. No one heeded her. She returned to the front--with a curious feeling of discomfiture.
"What can have happened? It's very odd. The door opened easily enough at first--it felt as if some one had pulled it from within. I wonder--Hullo! that's the time of day is it? I saw that curtain move. I fancy now, Miss Ella Duncan, that I've caught you--you are amusing yourself inside. I'll give that knocker a hammering which I'll engage to say you shall hear."
She was as good as her word--so far as the hammering was concerned. She kept up a hideous tattoo for some three or four minutes without cessation. But though it is not impossible that the din was audible on the other side of the Common, within none heeded. She was becoming annoyed. Going to the sitting-room window, she tapped sharply at the frame.
"Ella, I saw you! Don't be so silly! Open the door! You'll have all the neighbourhood about the place. It's too bad of you to keep me outside like this."
It might be too bad; but the offender showed no sign of relenting. Madge struck her knuckles against the pane with force enough to break the glass.
"Ella!"
Still silence.
"How can you be so stupid--and unkind! Ella, open the door! Or is it you, Jack? Don't think I didn't see you, because I did--I saw you move the curtain."
She might have done, but the curtain was motionless enough now. Madge was losing her temper fast. In her estimation, to be kept out of the house like this was carrying a sufficiently bad joke a good deal too far.