Читать книгу The Joss: A Reversion онлайн

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“Open!” he said, in that queer, half-stifled voice in which he had spoken to me before.

The door was opened wide, though how the housekeeper had had time to remove the chain, if it was chained, was more than I could understand. Emily and I marched into the passage—sneaked, I daresay, would have been the better word. As I went the stranger slipped something into my hand; a hard something, wrapped in a scrap of paper.

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I do not know what it was, but something prevented Mrs. Galloway from giving us the sort of talking to I had expected. She is a woman with as nasty a tongue as you would care to meet. I had never before known her lose a chance of using it. And there was a chance! But, instead, there she stood mumchance, and before she had even so much as said a word, Emily and I were off upstairs. I was on the second floor, and Emily was on the third. When I stopped to go into my room I called out to her, “Good night!” but she ran on, and never answered. She was in such a state of mind, what with the fright, and her crying, and the cold biting us through and through while we waited on the doorstep, that all she cared for was to get between the sheets.