"Thaddeus," cried Mrs. Ducklow, "is that you?"
It was Thaddeus, indeed, who, awaking from a real dream of the drum this time, and, hearing conversation in the room below, had once more descended the stairs to listen. What were the old people hiding there under the carpet? It must be those curious things in the envelope. And what were those things, about which so much mystery seemed necessary? Taddy was peeping and considering, when he heard his name called. He would have glided back to bed again, but Mrs. Ducklow, who sprang to the stairway-door, was too quick for him.
"What do you want now?" she demanded.
"I—I want you to scratch my back," said Taddy.
As he had often come to her with this innocent request, after undressing for bed, he did not see why the excuse would not pass as readily as the previous one of somnambulism. But Mrs. Ducklow was in no mood to be trifled with.
"I'll scratch your back for ye!" And seizing her rattan, she laid it smartly on the troublesome part, to the terror and pain of poor Taddy, who concluded that too much of a good thing was decidedly worse than nothing. "There, you Sir, that's a scratching that 'll last ye for one while!"
And giving him two or three parting cuts, not confined to the region of the back, but falling upon the lower latitudes, which they marked like so many geographical parallels, she dismissed him with a sharp injunction not to let himself be seen or heard again that night.
Taddy obeyed, and, crying himself to sleep, dreamed that he was himself a drum, and that Mrs. Ducklow beat him.
"Father!" called Mrs. Ducklow to her husband, who was at the barn, "do you know what time it is? It's nine o'clock! I wouldn't think of going over there to-night; they'll be all locked up, and abed and asleep, like as not."
"Wal, I s'pose I must do as you say," replied Mr. Ducklow, glad of an excuse not to go,—Miss Beswick's visit having left him in extremely low spirits.