ses here. I have more than once
opened the back-door late in the evening, because I fancied that one of
the dogs had been hurt, and was groaning outside.

That stormy winter after the Ladybrig murder, our fancies and the wind
together played Eleanor and me sad tricks. When once we began to listen
we seemed to hear a whole tragedy going on close outside. We could
distinguish footsteps and voices through the bluster, and then a
struggle in the shrubbery, and a _thud_, and a groan, and then a roar of
wind, half drowning the sound of flying footsteps--and then an awful
pause, and at last faint groaning, and a bump, as of some poor wounded
body falling against the house. At this point we were wont to summon
courage and rush out, with the kitchen poker and a candle shapeless with
tallow shrouds from the strong draughts. We never could see anything;
partly, perhaps, because the candle was always blown out; and when we
stood outside it became evident that what we had heard was only the
wind, and a bough of the old acacia-tree, which beat at intervals upon
the house.

When the nights are stormy there is no room so comfortable as the big
kitchen. We first used it for parochial purposes, small night-schools,
and so forth. Then one evening, as we strolled in to look for one of
the dogs, the cook said, "You can sit here, if you like, Miss Eleanor.
_We_ always sits in the pantry on winter nights; so there'll be no one
to disturb you." And as we had some writing on hand which we did not
wish to have discussed or overlooked by other members of the family, we
settled down in great peace and comfort by the roaring fire which the
maids had heaped to keep the kitchen warm in their absence.

We found ourselves so cosy and independent that we returned again and
again to our new study. The boys (who go away a great deal more than we
do, and are apt to come back dissatisfied with our "ways," and anxious
to make us more "like other people") object strongly to this habit of
ours. They say, "Who ever _heard_ of ladies sitting in the kitchen?"
And, indeed, there are many south-country kitchens in which I should not
at all like to sit. But we have this large, airy, spotlessly clean room,
with its stone floor, its yellow-washed walls, its tables scrubbed to
snowy whiteness, its quaint old dresser and clock and corner cupboards
of shiny black oak, and its huge fire-place and blazing fire all to
ourselves, and we have abundance of room, and may do a