I mention this because it was the beginning of times when Julianna was being asked to other girls’ houses and for nice harmless larks at fine people’s country-places, when vacations came. On one of these times when she was away, a voice came whispering to us out of the past!
It was the Christmas season, bitter cold, and before I went to bed I could hear the wind snapping the icicles off the edge of the library balcony and sending them, like bits of broken goblets onto bricks and crusted snow below. I could see the flash of them, too, as they went by the light from the frosted windows in the kitchen basement, but nothing else showed outside in the old walled garden, for it was as black as a pocket.
Not later than ten I crawled up the stairs and stood for a minute in the dining-room. I heard the scratch of the Judge’s pen and knew he was hard at work, and I remember, when I looked through the curtains, how I thought of how old the Judge looked, with his hair already turning from gray to white, and of how the youth of all of us hangs for a moment on the edge and then slides away without any warning or place where a body can put a finger and say, “It went at that moment.” Perhaps I would have stood there longer, but the Judge looked up and smiled, dry enough.
“You may think I am working,” he said. “But I’m mostly engaged just now, Margaret, exerting will power to overcome a foolish fancy.”
“What is that, sir?” I asked.
“That somebody is watching me,” he said. “I’ve turned around a dozen times and left this seat twice already. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, but I’ve made up my mind not to look again.”
“Not to look?” I cried.
“No. There’s nothing there.”
“Where?” I said.
“Below—in the garden or on the balcony,” he answered; “somewhere outside the window.”