Patty, feeling safer, screamed "Fief!" once more; and Mary gave her a shaking, which caused the child to bite her tongue; after which Mary hugged and kissed her with the deepest remorse.
Who knew how long either of them had to live? What if the man should break down the kitchen door and get into the house? He was knocking harder than ever, and had been calling out several times,—
"Let me in! Why don't you let me in?"
"There, I do declare, that sounds like Dr. Hilton," whispered Mary to Patty.
And sure enough, next moment the voice of Siller was heard exclaiming, in the utmost surprise,—
"Bless me, doctor, you don't mean to say that's you!"
It was the most welcome sound that the little prisoners in the "hampshire" could possibly have heard. And the laugh, gruff and cracked, which came from the doctor's throat, as soon as he got fairly into the house, was sweeter than the song of a nightingale.
"Let us out! Let us out!" cried they, knocking to be let out as hard as the doctor had knocked to be let in, for Mary was beating the door with a bucket of sugar and Patty with a pewter porringer. But Siller was "all of a fluster," and it was the doctor himself who opened the hampshire doors after the little girls had almost pounded them down.
They were both ashamed to be caught in their night-dresses, and ran up stairs as fast as they could go, but on the way overheard the doctor reproving Siller for giving "those innocent little children such a scare." He was not a wise man, by any means, but he had good common sense.
"It is lucky my wife don't believe in witches," said he, "for I'm as likely to come home late at night as any way, and she'd be in hot water half her time."