Milburd? I'll
chance it, and ask. I say, “Milburd?” cautiously. No. Not a sound. I own to being a little nervous. Someone—Boodels, I think—once said that fine natures were always nervous.
Happy Thought.
—When nervous, reason with yourself quietly.
I say, to myself, reasoning, this is not
fright
: this is not
cowardice
: it's simply nervousness. You wouldn't (this addressed to myself) be afraid of meeting a . . . a . . . for instance . . . say . . . a ghost . . . no. Why should you? You've never injured a ghost that you know of, and why should a ghost hurt you? Besides . . . nonsense . . . there are no ghosts . . . and as to burglars . . . the house doesn't belong to us yet, and so if I meet one, there'd be no necessity to struggle . . . on the contrary, I might be jocosely polite; I might say, “Make yourself at home; you've as much right here as I have.” . . . . But, on second thoughts, no one would, or could, come here to rob this place. It's empty. . . . . .
Odd. I cannot find the door I came in at. I thought that when I entered by it, I stepped on to a landing, but I suppose that it is only a door in the wall, and opens simply on to a step of the stairs.
Perhaps this is an unfrequented staircase. One might be locked up here, and remain here, for anything that the old woman, or her husband, would know about it.
If one was locked away here, or anywhere, for how long would it remain a secret?
When one has been absent from town for instance, for months, and then returns, nobody knows whether you've been in your own room all the time, or in Kamschatka. They say, “Hallo! how d'ye do? How are you? Where have you been this age?” They've never inquired. They've got on very well without you. Important matters, too, which “absolutely demand your presence,” as the letter says, which you find on your table six months afterwards, settle themselves without your interference.
The story of the Mistletoe Bough, where a young lady hides herself in an oak
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