Australian Tales - Setis

to see; for she uttered a shrill scream, which awakened the three young
lady boarders, and they all screamed too; while they tumbled out of bed
as nimbly as sailors in a sinking ship, rushed out of the attic to the floor
below, and aroused all the other boarders and Mrs. Backboard, with the
startling report that a ghost was in the gutter on the roof, and knocking at
their bedroom window.
An indescribable commotion filled the house, and the utmost efforts of
Mrs. Backboard to restore order and discipline, failed altogether. Threats
of long lessons, and “bad marks,” on the morrow, had no perceptible
effect in quelling the panic, which possessed every fluttering young
heart, and blanched every fair face. The housemaid positively refused to
go for a policeman, and received a week's warning there and then; and
the cook, with insubordination in her eyes, declared that she would not
stir a peg at that time of night, for the best place in the colony. The pupil
teacher suggested that they should all shout together from the drawingroom
windows, and she was sure they would be heard at all the police
stations in Sydney; but she was peremptorily ordered to be silent, and to
go and look for the wooden rattle in the lumber room, which orders she
very reluctantly obeyed.
Mrs. Backboard was a strong-minded woman, and had always
professed a thorough contempt for spirits of all sorts: so she took a
candlestick, and requesting six of the senior boarders to follow her,
boldly ascended to the front attic; but had no sooner entered it, than she
turned round and hastened out again, with her face as white as the wax
candle in her hand; for she had beheld Mrs. Lemompip's night-capped
head at the window, and had heard her bony knuckles knocking against
the glass. The startled school mistress did not wait an instant to see or
hear more, but descended to the second floor, almost as quickly as the six
senior boarders, who had skipped down the stairs in double quick time,
each one believing that the ghost was close behind her.
Meantime Mrs. Lemonpip was shivering on the wet slates, in a state of
mind bordering on despair. She had failed to gain ingress to Mrs.
Backboard's and was unable to regain her own house, for she could not
reach the window unassisted. She was afraid to apply for admission at
number three, as they kept young men lodgers; so in her helpless misery
she squatted down in the leaden gutter, and there indulged in reflections,
bitter as the soot which tattooed her scanty attire. Reverses had befallen
her, sudden and severe, and withal shrouded in a horrible mystery, which
her reason vainly tried to unfold. But a brief hour before she was the
most important member of the house, upon the roof of which she now sat
shivering, like a robin in a hard frost. She was now learning the sternly
practical lesson of the instability and the uncertainty of human positions.
An hour before, she had a superfluity of comforts at her command, and
was in her warm bed, beside her live husband. She was a reverenced