‘Keep away!’ cried Eve in the greatest alarm.
‘If you cry out, if you rouse Leah and bring her here, I will make such a hooting and howling as will kill the old man downstairs with fear.’
‘In pity go. What do you want?’ asked Eve, backing from the window to the farthest wall.
‘Take care! Do not run out of the room. If you attempt it, I will jump in, and make my fiddle squeal, and caper about, till even the sober Barbara—Leah I mean—will believe that devils have taken possession, and as for the old man, he will give up his ghost to them without a protest.’
‘I entreat you—I implore you—go!’ pleaded Eve, with tears of alarm in her eyes, cowering back against the wall, too frightened even to think of the costume she wore.
‘Ah!’ jeered the impish boy. ‘Run along down into the room where your sister is reading and praying with the old man, and what will they suppose but that a crazy opera-dancer has broken loose from her caravan and is rambling over the country.’
He chuckled, he enjoyed her terror.
‘Do you know how I have managed to get this little talk with you uninterrupted? I hooted in at the window of your father, and when he woke made faces at him. Then he screamed for help, and Barbara went to him. Now here am I; I scrambled up the old pear-tree trained against the wall. What is it, a Chaumontel or a Jargonelle? It can’t be a Bon Chrétien, or it would not have borne me.’
Eve’s face was white, her eyes were wide with terror, her hands behind her scrabbled at the wall, and tore the paper. ‘Oh, what do you want? Pray, pray go!’