"
"Well, I'm glad of that--anything for a change," I said. And in
came Eliza, flanked by Rosie and Mary Anne.
Her story, broken with sobs and corrections from the other two,
was this: At two o'clock (two-fifteen, Rosie insisted) she had
gone up-stairs to get a picture from her room to show Mary Anne.
(A picture of a LADY, Mary Anne interposed.) She went up the
servants' staircase and along the corridor to her room, which lay
between the trunk-room and the unfinished ball-room. She heard a
sound as she went down the corridor, like some one moving
furniture, but she was not nervous. She thought it might be men
examining the house after the fire the night before, but she
looked in the trunk-room and saw nobody.
She went into her room quietly. The noise had ceased, and
everything was quiet. Then she sat down on the side of her bed,
and, feeling faint--she was subject to spells--("I told you that
when I came, didn't I, Rosie?" "Yes'm, indeed she did!")--she
put her head down on her pillow and--
"Took a nap. All right!" I said. "Go on."
"When I came to, Miss Innes, sure as I'm sittin' here, I thought
I'd die. Somethin' hit me on the face, and I set up, sudden.
And then I seen the plaster drop, droppin' from a little hole in
the wall. And the first thing I knew, an iron bar that long"
(fully two yards by her measure) "shot through that hole and
tumbled on the bed. If I'd been still sleeping" ("Fainting,"
corrected Rosie) "I'd 'a' been hit on the head and killed!"
"I wisht you'd heard her scream," put in Mary Anne.
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