to make Norah angry; but I was not asleep, for all she says I was. I
had been asleep--and I wakened up quite wide awake, though I was so
frightened. I kept my eyes nearly shut, and I saw the man quite plain.
A great brown man with a beard. He said his prayers. And then looked
at Edwin. And then Norah took him by the arm and led him away, after
they had whispered a bit together.'

'Now, my little woman must be reasonable,' said Mr Openshaw, who was
always patient with Ailsie. 'There was no man in the house last night
at all. No man comes into the house, as you know, if you think; much
less goes up into the nursery. But sometimes we dream something has
happened, and the dream is so like reality, that you are not the first
person, little woman, who has stood out that the thing has really
happened.'

'But, indeed, it was not a dream!' said Ailsie, beginning to cry.

Just then Mr and Mrs Chadwick came down, looking grave and
discomposed. All during breakfast-time they were silent and
uncomfortable. As soon as the breakfast things were taken away, and
the children had been carried upstairs, Mr Chadwick began, in an
evidently preconcerted manner, to inquire if his nephew was certain
that all his servants were honest; for, that Mrs Chadwick had that
morning missed a very valuable brooch, which she had worn the
day before. She remembered taking it off when she came home from
Buckingham Palace. Mr Openshaw's face contracted into hard lines; grew
like what it was before he had known his wife and her child. He rang
the bell, even before his uncle had done speaking. It was answered by
the housemaid.