Page:My Friend Annabel Lee (1903).pdf/238

 stopped in the kitchen to demand of Emma why she allowed such things to happen, and ordered her to go at once and clean out the duck-yard. Emma obeyed, first giving up Mrs. Kaatenstein's bed-room key and explaining her own possession of it.

"Then Mrs. Kaatenstein, after doctoring little Willy Kaatenstein's poor little stomach and laying him neatly out on a sofa in a cool, dark room, went on to her own room, whence proceeded unusual noises. Unlocking and opening the door, a sight the like of which she had not of late years known overwhelmed her spirit.

"The short, dead silence that followed her appearance on the threshhold was but emphasized by the merry tinkling of the gay little circus which had been wound up and would not stop, even under the dark influence of impending tragedy.