“Not any, thanks; had I wished supper, I would have rung for it,” said Aunt Margaret, loftily.
“Thrue for you, missess, only there’s no bell,” answered the woman, coolly.
“More shame for you,” retorted my Aunt, with a little flush, glancing along the walls innocent of bell-rope, for this “most impertinent woman” made her feel a little small.
“I seen you lookin’ out again, ma’am, through the windy, I don’t know after who.”
The aplomb of this woman’s attacks deprived my Aunt of breath and presence of mind, and she was amazed afterwards at the perplexed sort of patience with which she submitted to her impertinence.
“Yes; I looked out of the window.”
“We would not like people stoppin’ here that had friends outside,” said the woman, with a searching glance and a sulky wag of her head.
“I don’t know what you mean, woman.”
“Oh, ho! thankee—I know very well what I mane—an’ mebbe you’re not quite sich a fool yourself but what you can make a guess. At any rate it is not a lady’s part to be furretin’ about the room, an’ pimpin’ an’ spyin’, ma’am.”
“Leave the room, please,” exclaimed my Aunt.
“An’ mebbe signin’ and beckonin’ out o’ the windies be night. Oh, ho! thankee—I know well enough what belongs to a lady.”
“I repeat, woman, you had better leave the room.”
“Woman, yourself!—I’m not goin’ to be woman’d be you—an’ the big lump iv a woman ye brought widge ye. Who’s that? eh?”
“My housekeeper,” replied my Aunt, with a fierce dignity.
“An’ a strappin’ ould one she is,” retorted the woman, with a hoarse sneer. She was turning over Winnie’s clothes, which lay on a chair.
“Your conduct is intolerable. I shall see the proprietor in the morning.”
“An’ welcome!” said the woman, coolly. “You closed the shutters again, I suppose?” and she walked round the bed to the window, from which my Aunt had made her observations.
I do believe that, if she was enraged, Aunt Margaret was also the least bit in the world cowed by this woman. But observing a little trembling in the bed-curtains, to the far side of which her ugly visitor had passed, my Aunt made a quick step to the side of the bed next her, and drawing the curtain, saw this unpleasant woman at the opposite side with the bedclothes raised in her hand from Winnie’s feet and ankles, which she was inspecting.
“Big feet! Where’s her boots, ma’am?” said the maid across the bed, eyeing my Aunt aslant, and replacing the bedclothes.
“Boots or shoes, on the floor by the fire, and I wish you’d begone.”
“I’ll take your own, too, ma’am,” answered she.
“Well, yes; that is, I’ll leave them outside the door.”
“As ye plaze; only get to yer bed, at wonst—it’s all hours;” and without more preparation, she chucked my Aunt’s mould candle from its socket into the fire, where, lying on its side it blazed up merrily.
“What do you mean? How dare you, hussy! Fetch a candle this moment.”
“Arra go to yer bed, woman, while ye have light, will ye?” and with these words the attendant withdrew, shutting the door with a clap.
VIII
Of a Figure Seen by My Aunt
My Aunt opened the door, very angry. She was about to walk downstairs to insist on trying the delinquent by court-martial before the “Proprietor;” but she recollected that he was probably in his bed and asleep by this time. She contented herself, therefore, by calling after her.
“Rely on it, I’ll complain in the morning—so sure as I live.”
And so she shut the door, and the candle making a glorious blaze in the grate my Aunt thought the chambermaid’s advice worth following, and did get into her bed while there was light.
I dare say her collision with the chambermaid cost her more than twenty minutes’ sleep. When her anger subsided there remained a different sort of uneasiness, for there was something ill-omened and menacing in the unintelligible ways of this inn and its people. My Aunt Margaret, however, was really tired, and eventually fell into a slumber, deep and dreamless, from which she awakened with a start.
She fancied that she had been disturbed by a sound as of some heavy weight pulled along the floor close to the room in which she slept. The sound had ceased before she was fully awake; but it left her with a most disagreeable sensation of fear and uncertainty, for, undefinably, it was connected in her mind with the idea of mischief designed to herself.
All of a sudden she remembered her trunk, left at the head of the staircase, and the idea rushed upon her, “They are stealing my trunk!” The sound resembled the rumble of it along the floor.
My Aunt had a keen sense of property, and was not wanting in pluck. She jumped out of bed, opened her door softly, and listened. But everything was perfectly quiet.
“It was in order to confine me to my room that that odious woman deprived me of my candle,” thought my Aunt, although even if she had had it at her bedside she could not have lighted it, for the fire had gone quite out.
She listened, but there was nothing stirring; and, in extreme deshabille, as she was, my Aunt, full of anxieties, crept out on the lobby, and made her way through the passages to the stairhead.
There stood the old hair trunk on its end, with its rows of dim brass nails, plain enough in the faint light from the lobby window. My Aunt was relieved. She would have been very glad to pull it into her room; but the distance was considerable, and the noise would have brought the people about her, and she was in no state to receive company.
Having stood affectionately and anxiously by the friendly trunk for a minute or two, irresolute, she began to
