d quite apart, with only the two houses close
beside it on either hand, and no others till you came quite into the
street itself. She opened every window to its utmost. Then she took a
tin pan, and a pair of tongs, and leaned out of the front parlour
window, and screamed three times, at the top of her lungs, beating
meanwhile with all her might upon the pan. Then she went to the next
window, and screamed and banged again, and so on all over the house.
There were twenty windows in her house, and by the time she had gone
the round, she was crimson and breathless. Nevertheless, she managed
to put her last breath into a shriek of such astounding volume that
the windows fairly rang. One last defiant clang of the tongs on the
tin pan and then she sat down quietly by the back parlour window, and
settled herself well behind the curtain, and prepared to enjoy herself
thoroughly. "They shall have their fill this time!" she murmured to
herself; "and I shall get all the good of it."

For some minutes there was dead silence: the event had been too awful
to be treated lightly. At length a rustling was heard, and very
cautiously a sharp nose, generously touched with colour, was protruded
from the window of the left-hand house.

"Mis' Bean," said the owner of the nose. "Be you there?"

"Well, I should say I was!" was the reply; and Mrs. Bean's fat curls
shook nervously out of her window.

"Maria Peake, what do you s'pose this means? Ain't it awful? Why, I've
got palpitations to that degree,--don't s'pose there's a robber in
the house, do ye? with all them weddin' presents about, 'twould be a
dreadful thing! 'Tain't likely he would spare her life, and she tryin'
to give the alarm like that! Most likely she's layin' dead this
minute, and welterin' in her--"

"Sssssssh!" hissed Mrs. Peake, in a deadly whisper. "Melissa Bean, you
won't let a person hear herself think. 'Tain't no robber, I tell ye!
She's gone out of her mind, Phrony Mellen has, as sure as you're a
breathin' woman!"

"You don't tell me she has!" Mrs. Bean leaned further out, her eyes
distended with awful curiosity, her fat lips dropping apart. She was
not a pleasant object, the hidden observer thought; but she was no
worse than the skinny cabbage-stalk which now stretched itself far out
from the opposite window.

"I tell ye," Mrs. Peake hissed, still in that serpent-whisper, the
most penetrating sound that ever broke stillness, "She's as crazy as a
clo'esline in a g