B. to bury her head with
extreme swiftness, ostrichlike, beneath the pillow, so that the
peroration of my argument is lost upon her. I enter the suspected
chamber--this time with a lighted candle--and find my trousers, with
the boots in them, hanging over the bedside something after the
manner of a drunken marauder, but nothing more. Neither is there
anybody reposing under the shadow of my boot-tree upon the floor. All
is peace there, and at sixes and sevens as I left it upon
retiring--as I had hoped--to rest.
Once more I stretch my chilled and tired limbs upon the couch; sweet
sleep once more begins to woo my eyelids, when "Henry, Henry!" again
dissolves the dim and half-formed dream.
"Are you _certain_, Henry, that you looked in the shower-bath? I am
almost sure that I heard somebody pulling the string."
No grounds, indeed, are too insufficient, no supposition too
incompatible with reason, for Mrs. B. to build her alarms upon.
Sometimes, although we lodge upon the second story, she imagines that
the window is being attempted; sometimes, although the register may
be down, she is confident that the chimney is being used as the means
of ingress.
Once, when we happened to be in London--where she feels, however, a
good deal safer than in the country--we had a real alarm, and Mrs.
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