You can fill any house with
noises, if you will, until you have a noise for every nerve in your
nervous system.
I repeat; the contagion of suspicion and fear was among us, and
there is no such contagion under the sky. The women (their noses in
a chronic state of excoriation from smelling-salts) were always
primed and loaded for a swoon, and ready to go off with hair-
triggers. The two elder detached the Odd Girl on all expeditions
that were considered doubly hazardous, and she always established
the reputation of such adventures by coming back cataleptic. If
Cook or Streaker went overhead after dark, we knew we should
presently hear a bump on the ceiling; and this took place so
constantly, that it was as if a fighting man were engaged to go
about the house, administering a touch of his art which I believe is
called The Auctioneer, to every domestic he met with.
It was in vain to do anything. It was in vain to be frightened, for
the moment in one's own person, by a real owl, and then to show the
owl. It was in vain to discover, by striking an accidental discord
on the piano, that Turk always howled at particular notes and
combinations. It was in vain to be a Rhadamanthus with the bells,
and if an unfortunate bell rang without leave, to have it down
inexorably and silence it. It was in vain to fire up chimneys, let
torches down the well, charge furiously into suspected rooms and
recesses.
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