and stooping, with her knotted hand fingering her loose mouth, shuffled up to me. “We're givin' notice, ma'am,” she whined. Astonishment sent me back into my chair.
“Delia!”
Delia wavered physically, and her whitish-blue eyes watered, but the spirit of fear possessed her utterly.
“I can't help it, ma'am, I've been in this house me last night.”
“But it's impossible! Leave Mrs. Brane like this, with no notice, no time to get any one else? Why, only the other day she was saying, 'I don't see how I could get rid of them even if I wanted to.'”
I meant this to sting, and I succeeded. All three queer, old faces flushed.
Delia muttered, “Well, she's found the way, that's all.”
“What has happened?” I demanded. “Is it because of me?”
“No'm,” the answer came promptly. “You're the best manager we've had here yet, an' you're a kind young lady.” This compliment came from Delia, the most affable of the three. “But, the fact is——”
A pause, and the fright they must have had to bring them all pale and gasping and inarticulate, like fish driven from the dim world of their accustomed lives, communicated itself in some measure to me.
“Yes?” I asked a little uncertainly.
Then Annie, the stolid, came out with it.
“There's somethin' in the house.”
At the words all three of them drew together.
“We've been suspectin' of it for a long time. Them housekeepers did n't leave a good place an' a kind mistress so quick for nothin'.” Delia had taken up the tale. “But we kinder mistrusted like that it was foolishness of some kind. But, miss, well—it ain't.”
I was silent a moment, looking at them, and feeling, I confess, rather blank.
“What is it, then?” I asked sharply.
“It's
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