place for the season of bad weather and short days. Sometimes he used to
be kept rather late, for besides his own affairs, he had, like his son,
my father, a good deal of magistrate's business to attend to. But however
late he was detained my grandmother always sat up for him, generally in a
little sitting-room she had on the storey above the long drawing-room I
have described to you, almost, that is to say, at the top of the house,
from attic to basement of which ran the lung 'twisty-turny, corkscrew
staircase.' One evening, about Christmas time it was, I think, my
grandfather was very late of coming home. My grandmother was not uneasy,
for he had told her he would be late, and she had mentioned it to the
servants, and told them they need not sit up. So there she was, late
at night, alone, sewing most likely--ah girls, I wish I could show you
some of her sewing--in her little parlour. She was not the least nervous,
yet it was a little 'eerie' perhaps, sitting up there alone so late,
listening for her husband's whistle--he always whistled when he was late,
so that she might be _sure_ it was he, when she went down to open the
door at his knock--and more than once she looked at the clock and wished
he would come. Suddenly a step outside the room, coming up the stair,
made her start. She had hardly time to wonder confusedly if it could be
my grandfather, knowing all the time it could _not_ be he--the doors were
all supposed to be locked and barred, and could only be opened from the
inside--when the door was flung open and some one looked in. Not my
grandfather certainly; the man who stood in the doorway was dressed in
some sort of rough workman's clothes, and his face was black and grimy.
That was all she had time to catch sight of, for, not expecting to see
her there, the intruder, startled, turned sharply round and made for the
stair. Up jumped my little grandmother; she took it all in in an instant,
and saw that her only chance was to take advantage of his momentary
surprise and start at seeing her. Up she jumped and rushed bravely after
him, making all the clatter she could. Downstairs he flew, imagining very
probably in his fright that two or three people instead of one little
woman were at his heels, and downstairs, round and round the corkscrew
staircase, she flew after him. Never afterwards, she has often since told
me, did she quite lose the association of that wild flight, never could
she go downstairs in that hou