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After the doctor was gone, she pulled the bed-curtain aside, and looked as if she wanted to speak to me. And she whispered, quite eagerly, 'Did he say I should have a baby? Of course, I could not keep it from her; but I thought it my duty to look as cold and severe as I could. She did not seem to understand how it ought to be viewed, but took it just as if she had a right to have a baby.

Others carried a couple of red wooden boxes filled with the clothes and personal belongings of the bride, also a wadded bed-quilt, a bed-curtain, and two embroidered pillows, etc. The whole procession made an imposing show, and the relatives of Everlasting Pearl looked after it with pride. The girl had been well provided for, and could lift up her head without shame before her husband's people.

"From Tillietudlem?" said the old gentleman, rising hastily in his bed, and sitting bolt upright, "Open the shutters, Pike I hope my sister-in-law is well furl up the bed-curtain. What have we all here?" The wappen-schaw? I told her a month since I was not to be there. Paduasoy and hanging sleeves? why, hang the gipsy herself! Grand Cyrus and Philipdastus?

Suddenly I saw the folds of my bed-curtain stir, and heard a bumping sound, like that caused by some person hopping on one foot across the floor. I must confess I became alternately hot and cold, that I felt a strange wind chill my back, and that my suddenly rising hair caused my night-cap to execute a leap of several yards.

I threw aside the bed-curtain, stepped forth, and said: "That time has come, monsieur!" M. de la Chatre could not have been more surprised if a spirit had risen from the floor at his feet. He stared at me with startled eyes. I had sheathed my sword while behind the curtains, and now I stood motionless, with folded arms, before him. Mademoiselle uttered a slight cry.

"From Tillietudlem?" said the old gentleman, rising hastily in his bed, and sitting bolt upright, "Open the shutters, Pike I hope my sister-in-law is well furl up the bed-curtain. What have we all here?" The wappen-schaw? I told her a month since I was not to be there. Paduasoy and hanging sleeves? why, hang the gipsy herself! Grand Cyrus and Philipdastus?

Wolfert made a feeble motion for them to be silent. Poor Amy buried her face and her grief in the bed-curtain.

Then he would run home in eager haste, and find old Mrs Grumbit hard at the one thousand nine hundred and ninety-ninth pair of worsted socks; and fat Mr Arthur Jollyboy sitting opposite to her, dressed in the old lady's bed-curtain chintz and high-crowned cap, with the white kitten in his arms and his spectacles on his chin, watching the process with intense interest and cautioning her not to forget the "hitch" by any means; whereupon the kitten would fly up in his face, and Mr Jollyboy would dash through the window with a loud howl, and Mrs Grumbit's face would turn blue; and, uncoiling an enormous tail, she would bound shrieking after him in among the trees and disappear!

The wooden blinds are flung back on the faded yellow walls, revealing a portion of white bed-curtain and a heavy middle-aged woman, en camisole, passing between the cooking stove, in which a rabbit in a tin pail lies steeping, and the men sitting at their trades in the windows.

At length, worn out, I dropped asleep, and in a dream I distinctly heard papa's voice say sharply outside the bed-curtain: 'Maud, we shall be late at Bartram-Haugh. And I awoke in a horror, the wall, as it seemed, still ringing with the summons, and the speaker, I fancied, standing at the other side of the curtain. A miserable night I passed.