“We’ll fling things at him if he tries to come up!” she gasped, groping for her boots.
It was a horrible experience: four nervous, quaking girls stood in the dim light on the landing gazing down into the haunted blackness of the shadowy hall. The sounds had ceased temporarily, but now they began again—a distinct shuffling as of footsteps, and even a subdued sniff, then the outline of a dark figure made its appearance, bearing straight for the stairs.
With quite commendable bravery Ingred flung her boots at it, which missiles were instantly followed by Nora’s hairbrush, Fil’s dispatch case, and Verity’s pillow. It screamed in a most unburglar-like voice, and apparently with genuine fright.
“If you t-t-t-try to c-c-come nearer, I’ll sh-sh-shoot you dead!” quavered Ingred, wishing she had at least some semblance of a pistol to bluff with.
“What are you doing, girls?” replied the dark shadow, persisting in its movement towards the staircase, and, as it came into the faint circle of radiance spread by the lamp, resolving itself into the familiar form of Nurse Warner. “Have you suddenly gone mad?”
Here was a situation! The four girls flew back to their dormitory in great haste, especially as Mrs. Best, disturbed by the noise, had opened her door and come on to the scene in a pink-and-gray dressing-gown. They were followed, however, by both Matron and Nurse, and forced to give an explanation of their extraordinary conduct.
“I couldn’t sleep for the wind, so I put on my felt slippers and my cloak, and went downstairs for a biscuit,” declared Nurse Warner, whose voice sounded rather aggrieved. “I didn’t think I should disturb anybody.”
“You girls are the limit with your silly notions!” said Mrs. Best, really angry for once. “If you fill your heads with absurd ideas about burglars before you go to sleep, of course you can imagine anything. If I hear any more talking in No. 2 another night after the lights are out, I shall separate you, and send each of you to sleep in another dormitory. I’ll not have the house upset like this! So you know what to expect. Are you all in your beds? Then not another word!”
“It’s very uncomfy without my pillow!” whispered naughty Verity, in distinct disobedience to this mandate, as the door of Mrs. Best’s room closed. “Dare I go and fetch it?”
“Sh! Sh! No!”
“I know what we’ll give Nursie for a Christmas present,” murmured Fil softly. “A nice ornamental tin box of biscuits to keep in her bedroom. She shan’t get hungry in the night again, poor dear!”
“Sh! Sh! Will you go to sleep!” warned Ingred emphatically.
X
The Whispering Stones
The Saxon family had squeezed themselves and certain of their possessions into the little home at Wynch-on-the-Wold, and while flowers still bloomed in the garden and apples hung ripe on the trees it seemed a kind of continuation of their summer holiday; but as the novelty wore off, and stormy weather came on, their altered circumstances began to be more evident. Most of us can make a plucky fight against fate at first—there had been something rather romantic about retiring to the bungalow—but the plain prose of the proceeding was yet to come, and there were certainly many disadvantages to be faced. Mr. Saxon was worried about business affairs; he was a proud, sensitive man, and felt it a great “come down” to be obliged to resign Rotherwood, and the social position it had stood for, and confess himself to the world as one of the “newly poor.” It was humiliating to have to walk or take a tram where he had formerly used his car in fulfilling his professional engagements, hard not to be able to entertain his friends, and perhaps hardest of all to be obliged to refuse subscriptions to the numerous charities in the town where his name had always stood conspicuously upon the liberal list. His temper, never his strongest point, suffered under the test, and he would come home from Grovebury in the evenings tired out, moody and fretful, and inclined to find fault with everything and everybody.
It took all his wife’s sunny sweetness of disposition to keep the home atmosphere cheerful and peaceful, for Egbert also had a temper, and was bitterly disappointed at not being sent to Cambridge, and at having to settle down in the family office instead. Father and son did not get on remarkably well together. Mr. Saxon, like many parents, pooh-poohed his boy’s business efforts, and would sometimes—to Egbert’s huge indignation—point out his mistakes before the clerks. He would declare, in a high and mighty way, that his own son should not receive special preference at the office, and so overdid his attitude of impartiality that he contrived to give him a worse time than any of his other articled pupils.
Athelstane, who had begun his medical course at the University of Birkshaw, also had his troubles. He had hoped to study at Guy’s Hospital in preparation for the London M.D., and to an ambitious young fellow it was hard to be satisfied with a provincial degree. The thirty-mile motor ride
