"I do not know, mamma. I looked everywhere in the room and could find no one. I have been quite upset. I cannot tell what to think of this. I feel utterly unhinged."
"I noticed at table that you did not appear well, but I said nothing about it. Your father gets so alarmed, and fidgets and fusses, if he thinks that there is anything the matter with you. But this is a most extraordinary story."
"It is an extraordinary fact," said Bessie.
"You have searched your room thoroughly?"
"I have looked into every corner."
"And there is no one there?"
"No one. Would you mind, mamma, sleeping with me to-night? I am so frightened. Do you think it can be a ghost?"
"Ghost? Fiddlesticks!"
I made some excuse to my husband and spent the night in Bessie"s room.
There was no disturbance that night of any sort, and although my daughter was excited and unable to sleep till long after midnight, she did fall into refreshing slumber at last, and in the morning said to me: "Mamma, I think I must have fancied that I saw something in the gla.s.s. I dare say my nerves were over-wrought."
I was greatly relieved to hear this, and I arrived at much the same conclusion as did Bessie, but was again bewildered, and my mind unsettled by Jane, who came to me just before lunch, when I was alone, and said--
"Please, ma"am, it"s only fair to say, but it"s not Miss Bessie."
"What is not Miss Bessie? I mean, who is not Miss Bessie?"
"Her as is spying on me."
"I told you it could not be she. Who is it?"
"Please, ma"am, I don"t know. It"s a red-haired girl."
"But, Jane, be serious. There is no red-haired girl in the house."
"I know there ain"t, ma"am. But for all that, she spies on me."
"Be reasonable, Jane," I said, disguising the shock her words produced on me. "If there be no red-haired girl in the house, how can you have one watching you?"
"I don"t know; but one does."
"How do you know that she is red-haired?"
"Because I have seen her."
"When?"
"This morning."
"Indeed?"
"Yes, ma"am. I was going upstairs, when I heard steps coming softly after me--the backstairs, ma"am; they"re rather dark and steep, and there"s no carpet on them, as on the front stairs, and I was sure I heard someone following me; so I twisted about, thinking it might be cook, but it wasn"t. I saw a young woman in a print dress, and the light as came from the window at the side fell on her head, and it was carrots--reg"lar carrots."
"Did you see her face?"
"No, ma"am; she put her arm up and turned and ran downstairs, and I went after her, but I never found her."
"You followed her--how far?"
"To the kitchen. Cook was there. And I said to cook, says I: "Did you see a girl come this way?" And she said, short-like: "No.""
"And cook saw nothing at all?"
"Nothing. She didn"t seem best pleased at my axing. I suppose I frightened her, as I"d been telling her about how I was followed and spied on."
I mused a moment only, and then said solemnly--
"Jane, what you want is a _pill_. You are suffering from hallucinations.
I know a case very much like yours; and take my word for it that, in your condition of liver or digestion, a pill is a sovereign remedy. Set your mind at rest; this is a mere delusion, caused by pressure on the optic nerve. I will give you a pill to-night when you go to bed, another to-morrow, a third on the day after, and that will settle the red-haired girl. You will see no more of her."
"You think so, ma"am?"
"I am sure of it."
On consideration, I thought it as well to mention the matter to the cook, a strange, reserved woman, not given to talking, who did her work admirably, but whom, for some inexplicable reason, I did not like. If I had considered a little further as to how to broach the subject, I should perhaps have proved more successful; but by not doing so I rushed the question and obtained no satisfaction.
I had gone down to the kitchen to order dinner, and the difficult question had arisen how to dispose of the sc.r.a.ps from yesterday"s joint.
"Rissoles, ma"am?"
"No," said I, "not rissoles. Your master objects to them."
"Then perhaps croquettes?"
"They are only rissoles in disguise."
"Perhaps cottage pie?"
"No; that is inorganic rissole, a sort of protoplasm out of which rissoles are developed."
"Then, ma"am, I might make a hash."
"Not an ordinary, barefaced, rudimentary hash?"
"No, ma"am, with French mushrooms, or truffles, or tomatoes."
"Well--yes--perhaps. By the way, talking of tomatoes, who is that red-haired girl who has been about the house?"
"Can"t say, ma"am."
I noticed at once that the eyes of the cook contracted, her lips tightened, and her face a.s.sumed a half-defiant, half-terrified look.