The Tower Rooms by Mary Grant Bruce

Author:Mary Grant Bruce
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction, mystery, girls, Australia
Publisher: Distributed Proofreaders Canada
Published: 1926-04-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER X

I HEAR OF ROBBERS

MRS. McNAB kept to the Tower rooms all next day. Julia brought me a message early in the morning.

“She put her head out at me when I did be sweepin’ the landin’ outside her door. ‘Let you be tellin’ Miss Earle I’d like to see her up here,’ says she: ‘an’ I’ll be takin’ all me meals here to-day,’ she says. ‘The work is troublin’ me,’ she says. An’ I’d say from the look she had on her that something was afflictin’ her. Yerra, there’s a powerful lot of misery over writin’ books. I never did read a book if I could help it, but if ever I’m druv to it I’ll be pityin’ the poor soul that wrote it all the time. It’s a poor trade for the spirits.”

As soon as I was dressed I ran up the narrow stairway and tapped at the door. Mrs. McNab opened it immediately. She was very pale, and there were dark circles under her eyes.

“I have not slept much,” she said, in answer to my inquiries. Evidently she had not climbed the steep steps to her bedroom, for there were tumbled rugs and cushions on the big couch; but she was fully dressed, and her iron-grey shingled hair was as neat as usual. “I think it would be as well if I did not go down-stairs to-day.” But she laughed at my suggestion to call in the Wootong doctor.

“Oh no: my hand is really not bad. I suppose I must be feeling a certain amount of shock, that is all. I will spend a lazy day. You can manage without me, can you not?”

I begged her not to worry on that score, and proceeded to dress her hand. The burns were nothing to be anxious about: there was no sign of inflammation, and she possessed the clean, healthy skin that heals rapidly. She was mildly proud of it as I adjusted the bandages.

“I always heal quickly—no cut or burn ever troubles me for long,” she remarked. “Indeed, I rarely have to bandage a trifling hurt: but one has to be careful with a blister. Perhaps you will not mind coming up after luncheon and dinner to renew the dressings. Judith is quite well this morning, I hope?”

“Quite—judging by the rate at which I saw her tearing over the paddock to bathe, half an hour ago,” I said, laughing. “And she and Jack have promised me that there will be no more unlawful excursions at night. We have made a solemn alliance!”

“I am indeed relieved to hear it.” She looked at me with something like warmth. “You manage them very well, my dear: they recognize something in you that they can trust. There has been mutual abhorrence between them and their other governesses. I had begun to despair of them—every one has regarded them as outlaws.”

“There is nothing much wrong with Judy and Jack beyond high spirits,” I defended. “And I think there is a good deal in what

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