regarding her silver watch.

As to our nightly life, the contagion of suspicion and fear was
among us, and there is no such contagion under the sky. Hooded
woman? According to the accounts, we were in a perfect Convent of
hooded women. Noises? With that contagion downstairs, I myself
have sat in the dismal parlour, listening, until I have heard so
many and such strange noises, that they would have chilled my blood
if I had not warmed it by dashing out to make discoveries. Try this
in bed, in the dead of the night: try this at your own comfortable
fire-side, in the life of the night. You can fill any house with
noises, if you will, until you have a noise for every nerve in your
nervous system.

I repeat; the contagion of suspicion and fear was among us, and
there is no such contagion under the sky. The women (their noses in
a chronic state of excoriation from smelling-salts) were always
primed and loaded for a swoon, and ready to go off with hair-
triggers. The two elder detached the Odd Girl on all expeditions
that were considered doubly hazardous, and she always established
the reputation of such adventures by coming back cataleptic. If
Cook or Streaker went overhead after dark, we knew we should
presently hear a bump on the ceiling; and this took place so
constantly, that it was as if a fighting man were engaged to go
about the house, administering a touch of his art which I believe is
called The Auctioneer, to every domestic he met with.

It was in vain to do anything. It was in vain to be frightened, for
the moment in one's own person, by a real owl, and then to show the
owl. It was in vain to discover, by striking an accidental discord