Читать книгу Rose Clark - Fern Fanny - Страница 8

"Mercy on us! you don't expect me to sleep in that room, do you?" asked Timmins of Mrs. Markham, as they stopped before the door of the room where little Tibbie died.

"I wouldn't do it for a purse of gold. I know I should see her ghost; oh, it would be awful;" and Timmins put her hands before her face, as if the ghost were looming up in the depths of the dimly-lighted entry.

"Nonsense!" said Mrs. Markham; "how superstitious you are! I am going to sleep there with you."

"Are you? Well, that alters the case," and Mrs. Markham led the way, while Timmins followed her with distended eyes.

"I really can't help thinking she will come back," said Timmins, as Mrs. Markham extinguished the light and crept into bed. "I can't seem to get over it, about her dying all alone. How very thin she was. Did you ever think she was unhappy, Mrs. Markham?"

"I don't think any thing about it, Timmins. I go to bed for the purpose of sleeping;" and turning her back upon Timmins, she buried her frilled night-cap in the pillow.

"Don't cuddie up so close, Timmins," said Mrs. Markham, about ten minutes after; "you make me insufferably hot."

"Lor', ma'am, I can't help it; I can't see nothing, and you won't speak to me, and how am I going to know that you are there?"

"Guess at it," said Markham, giving another hitch away toward the wall, and soon her sonorous breathing announced her departure to the land of dreams.

"Goodness alive! if she ain't asleep," said Timmins; "what if Tibbie should come back? Oh dear! I am sure I am sorry enough I left her so. I'll put my head under the bed-clothes. No I won't – because if it is coming, Mrs. Markham must wake up, for I shan't be good for nothing; I never spoke to a ghost in my life."

"What's – that?" she whispered hoarsely, as, by the dim light of the street-lamp on the window-glass, she saw the door open slowly, and a little figure dressed in white, glide in. "Oh Lor' – oh Mrs. Markham – (griping that lady by the arm) – it's come! Hist – there – there – oh – oh, it's coming here," whispered Timmins, as Mrs. Markham, now thoroughly roused, trembled as violently as Timmins, and both made a shuddering plunge under the bed-clothes.

"You look out, Timmins?"

"No —you, Mrs. Markham!" and both night-caps were thrust carefully from under the sides of the raised sheets.

There was the little figure – it was no illusion – flitting, gliding about the room; now here, now more distant, and now, with its pale, wan face and outstretched arms, it approaches the bed. Timmins and Markham both jump shrieking from it through the door, and fall senseless upon the entry floor.

The wicked flee when none pursueth.

Poor innocent little Rose! Waked suddenly from her somnambulistic sleep, she stands gazing about her, the unconscious avenger of little Tibbie's sufferings, and her own.