"Oh, how I wish Ralph were here, and that we had a lamp. I could spend the night here, looking at everything; but I can"t do it now with this little candle end."
At her feet was a wooden box, the lid of which was evidently unfastened, for it lay at an angle across the top.
"I will look into this one box," she said, "and then I will go down."
She knelt down, and with the candle in her right hand, pushed aside the lid with her left. From the box there grinned at her a human skull, surrounded by its bones. She started back.
"Uncle b.u.t.terwood," she gasped and tried to rise, but her strength and senses left her, and she fell over unconscious, upon the floor. The candle dropped from her hand, and, fortunately, went out.
CHAPTER V
PANNEYOPATHY
About ten o"clock the next morning, Mike, in his little wagon, rattled up to the door of Dr. Tolbridge.
The doctor was not at home, but his wife came out.
"That young girl!" she exclaimed. "Why, what can be the matter with her?"
"I dunno, ma"am," answered Mike. "Phoebe told me just as the wagon got there with the boxes an" trunks, an" n.o.body but me to help the man upstairs with "em, an" said I must get away to the doctor"s jes" as fast as I could drive. She said somethin" about her sleepin" in the garret and ketchin" cold, but she wouldn"t let me stop to ax no questions. She said the doctor was wanted straight off."
"I am very sorry," said Mrs. Tolbridge, "that he is not here, but he said he was going to stop and see Miss Panney. I can"t tell you any other place to which he was going. If you drive back by the Witton road, you may find him, or, if he has not yet arrived, it might be well to wait for him."
Arrived at the Witton house, Mike saw Miss Panney, wrapped in a heavy shawl and wearing a hood, taking her morning exercise on the piazza.
"They want the doctor already!" she exclaimed in answer to Mike"s inquiries. "Who could have thought that? And he left here nearly half an hour ago. His wife will send him when he gets home, but there is no knowing when that will be. However, she must have somebody to attend to her. Mike, I will go myself. I will go with you in your wagon. Wait one minute."
Into the house popped Miss Panney, and in a very short time returned, carrying with her an umbrella and a large reticule made of brown plush, and adorned with her monogram in yellow. One of the Witton girls came with her, and a.s.sisted her to the seat, by the side of Mike.
"Now then," said she, "get along as fast as you can. I shall not mind the jolts."
"Phoebe," said Miss Panney, as she entered the Cobhurst door, "it"s a long time since I have seen you, and I have not been in this house for eight years. I hope you will be able to tell me something about this sudden sickness, for Mike is as stupid as a stone post, and knows nothing at all."
"Now, Miss Panney," said Phoebe, speaking very earnestly, but in a low voice, "I can"t say that I can really give you the true head and tail of it, for it"s mighty hard to find out what did happen to that young gal.
All I know is that she didn"t come down to breakfast, and that Mr.
Haverley went up to her room hisself, and he knocked and he knocked, and then he pushed the door open and went in, and, bless my soul, Miss Panney, she wasn"t there. Then he hollered, and me and him, we sarched and sarched the house. He went up into the garret by hisself, for you may be sure I wouldn"t go there, but he was just wild, and didn"t care where he went, and there he found her dead asleep on the floor, and a livin"
skeleton a sittin" watchin" her."
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Miss Panney; "he never told you that."
"That"s the pint of what I got out of him, and you know, Miss Panney, that that garret"s hanted."
Miss Panney wasted no words in attempting to disprove this a.s.sertion.
"He found her asleep on the floor?" said she.
"Yes, Miss Panney," answered Phoebe, "dead asleep, or more likely, to my mind, in a dead faint, among all the drafts and chills of that garret, and in her stockin" feet. She had tuk up a candle with her, but I"spect the skeleton blowed it out. And now she"s got an awful cold, so she can scarcely breathe, and a fever hot enough to roast an egg."
At this moment Ralph appeared in the hall. The visitor immediately went up to him.
"Mr. Haverley, I suppose. I am Miss Panney. I am a neighbor, and I came to see if I could do anything for your sister before the doctor arrives.
I am a good nurse, and know all about sicknesses;" and she explained why she had come and the doctor had not.
When Miriam turned her head and saw the black eyes of Miss Panney gazing down upon her, she pushed herself back in the bed, and exclaimed,--
"Are you his wife?"
"No, indeed," said Miss Panney, "I wouldn"t marry him for a thousand pounds. I am your nurse. I am going to give you something nice to make you feel better. Put your hand in mine. There, that will do. Keep yourself covered up, even if you are a little warm, and I will come back presently with the nicest kind of a cup of tea."
"It"s a cold and a fever," she said to Ralph, outside the chamber door.
"The commonest thing in the world. But I"ll make her a hot drink that will do her more good than anything else that could be given her, and when the doctor comes, he"ll tell you so. He knows me, and what I can do for sick people. I brought everything that"s needed in my bag, and I am going down to the kitchen myself. But how in the world did she come to stay on the garret floor all night? She couldn"t have been in a swoon all that time."
"No," answered Ralph; "she told me she came to her senses, she didn"t know when, but that everything was pitch dark about her, and feeling dreadfully tired and weak, she put her head down on her arm, and tried to think why she was lying on such a hard floor, and then she must have dropped into the heavy sleep in which I found her. She was tired out with her journey and the excitement. Do you think she is in danger, Miss Panney?"
"Don"t believe it," said the old lady. "She looks strong, and these young things get well before you know it."
"Now, my young lady," said Miss Panney, as she stood by Miriam"s bedside, with a steaming bowl, "you may drink the whole of this, but you mustn"t ask me for any more, and then you may go to sleep, and to-morrow morning you can get up and skip around and see what sort of a place Cobhurst is by daylight."
"I can"t wait until to-morrow for that," said Miriam, "and is that tea or medicine?"
"It"s both, my dear; sit up and drink it off."
Miriam still eyed the bowl. "Is it homeopathic or allopathic?" she asked.
"Neither the one or the other," was the discreet reply; "it is Panneyopathic, and just the thing for a girl who wants to get out of bed as soon as she can."
Miriam looked full into the bright black eyes, and then took the bowl, and drank every drop of the contents.
"Thank you," she said. "It is perfectly horrid, but I must get up."
"Now you take a good long nap, and then I hope you will feel quite able to go down and begin to keep house for your brother."
"The first thing to do," said Miriam, as Miss Panney carefully adjusted the bedclothes about her shoulders, "is to see what sort a house we have got, and then I will know how I am to keep it."
When her young patient had dropped asleep, Miss Panney went downstairs.
In the lower hall she found Ralph walking up and down.
"There is no earthly need of your worrying yourself about your sister. I am sure the doctor would say she is in no danger at all," said the old lady. "And now, if you don"t mind, I would like very much to go up into the garret and see what frightened your sister."
"It was apparently a box of human bones," he said, "but I barely glanced at it. You are perfectly welcome to go up and examine."
It was a quarter of an hour before Miss Panney came down from the garret, laughing.
"I studied anatomy on those bones," she said. "Every one of them is marked in ink with its name. I had forgotten all about them. Mathias"