The House of Dead Maids Read Free Page A

you put me in,” I declared at last.“Somebody has been in it. Somebody has been playing!”
    I expected her to deny it, and I was prepared with my facts. I knew that none but a child would treasure that little hoard, or treat those feathers with such care. But Mrs. Sexton merely cinched her wrinkled lips tighter around the stem of her pipe.
    A clatter of pattens in the hallway just then brought me out of the kitchen at a trot, but by the time I reached the door, the person had gone. I heard the clatter go by again just out of sight around a corner, but another empty corridor was my reward. At length, I followed the sound to a bright, clean passage. I tried a door and found a pleasant parlor there, and Miss Winter glanced up from her book.
    “Have you brought tea?” she inquired. A clock on the mantel chimed five, the only clock I had seen in the whole house.
    “I was looking for the girl,” I confessed. “I thought she came in here. Mrs. Sexton said there isn’t a girl, but there is. She’s been in the room where I sleep.”
    “She comes and goes,” said Miss Winter. “I’m sure she’ll find you when she wants to. Tell that worthless woman in the kitchen I want my tea.”
    I stood in the doorway for a bit, but she didn’t look up or speak again, and I was too cowed to askquestions. Perhaps the other girl is simple, I thought, returning to the kitchen. Perhaps she’s not as she should be, and that makes the servants loath to mention her to strangers. It isn’t worth a quarrel, after all. And I persuaded Mrs. Sexton to let me take Miss Winter her tea, just for the pleasure of having an occupation.
    We ate our own meal in the kitchen, sharing the big wooden table between us. I loitered by the fire until the heat made me sleepy, and when Mrs. Sexton saw me nodding, she took me up to bed. She tended the fire, passed a pan of hot coals between the sheets to warm them and turned the key in the lock as she left.
    Late at night, the other girl returned to our chamber and climbed into bed with me. And, oh, how cold she was! The arms that twined around me were icy, and her dress was wringing wet. I grew cold to my bones as I hugged the thin form, attempting to warm it up. Vague fears troubled me, and Miss Winter’s stern figure haunted my sleep: nothing but a white face and hands, with her dress swallowed up in the night.
    When morning came, my little companion was gone, but not my indignation, and I was quite shortwith Mrs. Sexton when she pushed back the curtains on the bed.
    “The other girl was here last night,” I said severely, “and you needn’t pretend she wasn’t. What a state she was in! She’ll catch her death, the way you let her run about in wet things.”
    Mrs. Sexton only stared at me. Then she heaved a sigh and turned to tend to the fire.
    “You needn’t lock the door anymore, either,” I added. “It didn’t keep her out.”
    “Lock’s not for them,” muttered Mrs. Sexton. “Lock’s for you, to keep you from wandering the house at night and waking me up.”
    “I can be trusted to stay where I’m put,” I answered as I climbed down the wooden stepladder. “What’s that?”
    A handsome dress lay on the chair over my old one. The cloth of it was sturdy and new, and if it lacked the layers of petticoats that were the fashion in town, this did nothing to diminish my growing joy, for as I held the dress up, I could see beyond all doubt that it had been made for no one but me.
    “The village finished it last night,” said Mrs. Sexton, ignoring my pleasure to scrape the ashes.
    I smoothed the wide skirts, my bad temperforgotten at the amazing news that a village had worked together to clothe me. The dress was black, as black and perfect as a crow’s wing, a miniature copy of Miss Winter’s imposing garment. “I can wear this to church today,” I said, and that put the capstone on my delight. Never had I so much as dared to dream of poor ugly little Tabby Aykroyd showing off a new