And then the evenings, when the workmen had all gone and the house
was left to emptiness and echoes, and the old housekeeper had gathered
up her rheumatic limbs into her bed, and my little room in quite another
part of the house had been set ready, how reluctantly I used to leave
the friendly frogs and owls, and with my heart somewhere down in my shoes
lock the door to the garden behind me, and pass through the long series
of echoing south rooms full of shadows and ladders and ghostly pails
of painters' mess, and humming a tune to make myself believe I liked it,
go rather slowly across the brick-floored hall, up the creaking stairs,
down the long whitewashed passage, and with a final rush of panic whisk
into my room and double lock and bolt the door!

There were no bells in the house, and I used to take a great
dinner-bell to bed with me so that at least I might be able
to make a noise if frightened in the night, though what good it
would have been I don't know, as there was no one to hear.
The housemaid slept in another little cell opening out of mine, and we
two were the only living creatures in the great empty west wing.
She evidently did not believe in ghosts, for I could hear how she fell
asleep immediately after getting into bed; nor do I believe in them,
"mais je les redoute," as a French lady said, who from her books
appears to have been strongminded.

The dinner-bell was a great solace; it was never rung, but it
comforted me to see it on the chair beside my bed, as my nights
were anything but placid, it was all so strange, and there were such
queer creakings and other noises. I used to lie awake for hours,
startled out of a light sleep by the cracking of some board,
and listen to the indifferent snores of the girl in the next room.