"
"You can, if you like," said a voice from the folds of a towel that
waved lonely in front of the wash-hand stand
"All right. We will, then, first thing after brek your brek, I mean.
You'll have to wait up here till we can collar something and bring
it up to you. Mind you dodge Eliza when she comes to make the
bed."
The invisible Mabel found this a fairly amusing game; she further
enlivened it by twitching out the corners of tucked-up sheets and
blankets when Eliza wasn't looking.
"Drat the clothes!" said Eliza; "anyone ud think the things was
bewitched."
She looked about for the wonderful Princess clothes she had
glimpsed earlier in the morning. But Kathleen had hidden them in
a perfectly safe place under the mattress, which she knew Eliza
never turned.
Eliza hastily brushed up from the floor those bits of fluff which
come from goodness knows where in the best regulated houses.
Mabel, very hungry and exasperated at the long absence of the
others at their breakfast, could not forbear to whisper suddenly in
Eliza's ear:
"Always sweep under the mats."
The maid started and turned pale. "I must be going silly," she
murmured; "though it's just what mother always used to say. Hope
I ain't going dotty, like Aunt Emily. Wonderful what you can
fancy, ain't it?"
She took up the hearth-rug all the same, swept under it, and under
the fender.
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