Excerpt
CHAPTER I. OLD MANSY HEARS SOMETHING.
think I'll get out here, young man."
"All right, missus."
The old carrier stopped his jolting cart—an easy thing to do, for the wearied horse was glad of the chance of halting—and the passenger leisurely descended. With her descended also a bulging umbrella and numerous packages.
"Good night, young man!" she exclaimed. She thought this a very polite way of addressing men whom she regarded as somewhat beneath her in social station.
But he did not answer. He was urging on his sleepy horse, and though it was an easy matter to stop that interesting quadruped, yet it was a very different thing to make him go on again.
So she started off down a road leading out of the turnpike thoroughfare on which the carrier was travelling.
She was a tall, somewhat angular woman, with determination written on her face. In one hand she carried a number of parcels mysteriously tied together, and in the other hand her very bulgy umbrella, which she used as a walking stick, and staffed her way with it solemnly along the dim country road.
It was a summer evening, and there had been a heavy storm during the day. "Dear! dear! how dirty it be, surely," she said, as she proceeded. "Bad enough to be dirty in winter, but in summer it's disgraceful! Ha! how sweet that woodbine do smell! Now, if I could get a piece for the children!"
She stopped and began to poke about in the hedge with her bulging umbrella. At last, after much reaching and pulling, she obtained a small piece of the sweet-smelling honeysuckle, stuck it in her large, old-fashioned bonnet, where it nodded like a plume, and pursued her way in triumph.
"Soon be home now," she said, to encourage herself. "Won't Master Alfy be pleased with the woodbine!"
Suddenly she paused again. What was that noise?
She was at the corner of a lane branching off from the road she had been pursuing. Dimly in her ears sounded a low, sullen roar—a roar something like the murmuring noise of a mighty city heard in a quiet and distant suburb.
But here was no mighty city. She was deep in the heart of the quiet country. What was that noise?
"I never heerd the like afore at this place," she muttered to herself. "Anyhow, I'll get on home. I shan't be long now!"
A few turns in the road brought her in sight of the house. But she stood suddenly quite still, and stared in amazement and alarm. Was that indeed the house she had left quite safely in the smiling sunlight of yesterday morning?
Now, she saw a turbid sheet of water surrounding it; and here and there the tops of shrubs and trees and hedges, looking strange and melancholy as they rose out of the flood. The dull roar she had heard previously now sounded louder than before, but she did not think of that. The children were her anxiety. "Where are the children?" she cried.
The excitement and alarm wrought upon her feelings, and she screamed aloud—
"Children! children! Where are the children?"
Perhaps it was the best thing she could have done. Anyhow, it had a good effect....