Carter (dear friend, though she
was) quite alone downstairs with the bottom half of the house unguarded
(although, of course, the doors were locked), therefore, Mrs. Carter
came upstairs with her friend to see the little fellow put to bed; "and
a hangel he looks, if ever I see one," declared the lady
enthusiastically.
When the two were gone and the house was still, Henry would sit up in
bed and listen; then, moving quietly, he would creep out and listen
again.
There, in the passage, it seemed to him that he could hear the whole
house talking--first one sound and then another would come, the wheeze
of some straining floor, the creak of some whispering board, the shudder
of a door. "Look out! Look out! Look out!" and then, above that murmur,
some louder voice: "Watch! there's danger in the place!" Then, shivering
with cold and his sense of evil, he would creep down into a lower
passage and stand listening again; now the voices of the house were
deafening, rising on every side of him, like the running of little
streams suddenly heard on the turning of the corner of a hill. The dim
light shrouded with fantasy the walls; along the wide passage and
cabinets, high china jars, the hollow scoop of the window at the
far-distant end, were all alive and moving.
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