But Molly Trueheart was not sulking in the garret as Ginny Ann had
reported to her “ole miss.”
She had slept but a little while when she was awakened by a sound that
made her spring to her feet with a shriek of alarm--the hurrying and
scurrying of immense rats across the attic floor. Her black eyes opened
wide in terror, and she sprang upon the sofa, and stood watching the
loathsome animals as, startled by her scream, they scampered to their
holes.
“Good gracious! There must have been a hundred of the nasty little
vermin!” ejaculated Molly. In reality there had not been more than a
dozen, but her terrors had magnified their numbers. “Ugh! ugh! ugh!
how they make my flesh creep!” she continued, shuddering nervously and
drawing her skirts close around her dainty little feet. “And to think
that they might have bitten me in my sleep, the monsters! I wonder,
I _do_ wonder if Aunt Thalia intends for me to stay here all night!
I sha’n’t do it! so there, no, not if Louise loses every cent of the
fortune,” her eyes sparkling resentfully. “I don’t want my hair to turn
white in one night from terror.”
Stillness reigned again, for the rodents, as much alarmed by her
presence as she was by theirs, were trembling in their hiding-places.
Molly sprang down and ran over to the window, which, without much
difficulty, she flung open, letting in a flood of fresh air.
At the same moment she clapped her pretty dimpled hands together and
uttered a cry of mischievous pleasure.
“Molly Trueheart, you limb of mischief, I knew you would be sure to
have a lark if you stayed any longer at Ferndale!”
Close to that side of the house grew a stately oak tree that flung out
its long, strong arms close to the window-sill. The large, laughing
dark eyes were fixed on the tree while she spoke, and in another moment
she climbed up into the window, twined her round white arms about a
stout branch, and swung herself forward with kitten-like agility into
the big tree, sliding from limb to limb until she was securely seated
on a stout branch with her back against the body of the oak.
“Farewell, my late companions!” she cried gayly, waving her hand at the
window, and thoroughly enjoying her escapade. “Oh, how delicious this
is after Aunt Thalia’s musty old garret! I think I shall sleep in this
tree all night. The big limbs and thick green leaves will make me a
splendid bed, and--ouch, oh, Lord have mercy! oh! oh! oh!” and as the
last exclamation left her lips, Molly’s hold on the tree relaxed, and
she went crashing down, with a rustle of breaking twigs and scattering
leaves, through the branches to the ground, where she lay groaning on
the grass amid the _debris_ collected during her fall.
For, lifting her bright eyes to the higher branches of the tree, she
had suddenly beheld an immense black snake hanging downward with his
tail curled around a stout twig, and his head thrust forward toward
her, while his keen little eyes glowed in the green obscurity of the
thick leafage like baleful jewels.
Molly had given such a start and scream of terror that she had tumbled
headlong through the tree at least twenty feet from the ground, but
the soft, thick grass and the leaves that had fallen with her, had so
broken the severity of the fall that after the first groan she was able
to rise slowly to her feet and exclaim between laughter and tears:
“‘Och, I’m kilt intirely,’ as Paddy would say. Now I wonder if I can be
having the delirium tremens, seeing rats and snakes like this! It can’t
be, for I’ve never been addicted to the intoxicating glass! I believe
I’ve broken my arm, it hurts so bad. Good heavens, it’s coming down the
tree! It must be a racer. I’ll have to cut and run!”
This she did with surprising agility, only pausing to look behind her
once when she saw his snakeship, which did indeed belong to the racer
species, trailing his shining length rapidly after. With a half sob in
her throat, Molly flew on and on over hay-fields and hills, fences and
brooks, until she had left Ferndale a mile behind her, and came up with
a jerk against some tall, white palings that inclosed the beautiful
lawn she had admired while riding that day--the Laurens place, as old
Abe had called it in answer to her curious questions.