"How dare you ask us to carry things for you?" said Mrs. Pentreath, backing out of the door-way.
"Yes! how dare you ask us?" added Mr. Munder, backing after Mrs. Pentreath.
"Water!" shouted the old man for the third time. He drew his niece backward a little, so that she could be supported against the wall behind her. "Water! or I trample down this dungeon of a place about your ears!" he shouted, stamping with impatience and rage.
"If you please, Sir, are you sure it's really the lady who is up there?" asked Betsey, advancing a few paces tremulously with the glass of water.
"Am I sure?" exclaimed Uncle Joseph, descending the stairs to meet her. "What fool's question is this? Who should it be?"
"The ghost, Sir," said Betsey, advancing more and more slowly. "The ghost of the north rooms."
Uncle Joseph met her a few yards in advance of the foot of the stairs, took the glass of water from her with a gesture of contempt, and hastened back to his niece. As Betsey turned to effect her retreat, the bunch of keys lying on the pavement below the landing caught her eye. After a little hesitation she mustered courage enough to pick them up, and then ran with them out of the hall as fast as her feet could carry her.
Meanwhile Uncle Joseph was moistening his niece's lips with the water, and sprinkling it over her forehead. After a while her breath began to come and go slowly, in faint sighs, the muscles of her face moved a little, and she feebly opened her eyes. They fixed affrightedly on the old man, without any expression of recognition. He made her drink a little water, and spoke to her gently, and so brought her back at last to herself. Her first words were, "Don't leave me." Her first action, when she was able to move, was the action of crouching closer to him.
"No fear, my child," he said, soothingly; "I will keep by you. Tell me, Sarah, what has made you faint? What has frightened you so?"
"Oh, don't ask me! For God's sake, don't ask me!"