That was not a doctrine which in general Mr. Mule felt any disposition to question; though at the present moment he was not sorry to find that the prostrate rose-tree explained one part of his recent terrors upon less alarming principles. Without making any further comments, however, he now closed the window; bolted it securely against any second attempt to open it; and then retired again to his bed under considerable alleviations of his panic.
VI.—THIEVES AND GHOSTS.
And now let us quit these old gnomes, and the agitations of fear, for the lovely sylph, Miss Fanny, and the nobler agitations of love!—Miss Fanny! ah, poor thing, what’s to become of her? She’s bolted out now, and has no more chance of getting to her own bed than the rose inside has of rising up from the place where it lies floored, or of making amends to Mrs. Tabitha for the mischief it has done under her bed. Now, we suppose, there are people in this world depraved enough to laugh at this young creature and her distress; we, on the contrary, could find in our hearts to drop a tear or two, if we had time, in sympathy with her’s, especially when we see her, as she advances gaily up the lawn, suddenly stop, look up to the window, start back, clasp her hands, and then burst into tears. Poor thing, how her innocent heart beats! This is the third heart now out of one house that has palpitated almost to bursting within one half hour, and the reader’s heart must be made of mere stone if he pities none of them. As to Miss Fanny’s, however, we are glad to see her drying her tears, for her lover has most fortunately discovered that one of the library windows is a little open, and may be pushed up from the outside. Ay, Mr. Ferdinand, if you can get at it; but how is that to be done? The library windows are twenty feet from the ground. True, they are so; but Miss Fanny remembers a ladder which is kept at the gardener’s cottage; and the gardener’s cottage, by good luck, stands in the shrubbery.
Thither they bent their steps, and not a little surprised they were to find the door open: without scruple, however, they walked in, and the next minute they heard the door pulled to, and locked upon them by somebody from without. Here let us moralize upon the capricious misery of this human life of our’s; but two minutes ago we had a young lady before us weeping and refusing to be comforted because she is locked out, and now this same young lady is weeping because she is locked in. But how happened it? Thus: the gardener was at this time absent from home, and the gardener’s wife was kept waking not by ghosts but by thieves. Several little articles had recently disappeared
