Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 22 (US).djvu/69

 chord, behind every cup, behind the coffee-pot which she took from the cupboard, that shape peeped forth, like a little mandrake, and laughed in spiteful mockery, and snapped its little spider fingers, and cried: "He will not be thy husband! he will not be thy husband!" And then, when she threw all away, and fled to the middle of the room, it peered out again, with long nose, in gigantic bulk, from behind the stove, and snarled and growled: "He will not be thy husband!"

"Dost thou hear nothing, sister? dost thou see nothing?" cried Veronica, shivering with affright, and not daring to touch aught in the room. Franzchen rose, quite grave and quiet, from her broidering-frame, and said: "What ails thee today, sister? Thou art throwing all topsyturvy, and jingling and tingling. I must help thee, I see."

But here the lively visitors came tripping in with brisk laughter; and the same moment, Veronica perceived that it was the stove-handle which she had taken for a shape; and the creaking of the ill-shut stove-door for those spiteful words. Yet, thus violently seized with an inward horror, she could not so directly recover her composure, that the strange excitement, which even her paleness and agitated looks betrayed, was not noticed by the Mademoiselles Oster. As they at once cut short their merry narratives, and pressed her to tell them what, in Heaven's name, had happened, Veronica was obliged to admit that certain strange thoughts had come into her mind; and suddenly, in open day, a dread of spectres, which she did not use to feel, had got the better of her. She described in such lively colours how a little grey mannikin, peeping out of all the corners of the room, had mocked and plagued her, that the Mademoiselles Oster began to look round with timid glances, and start all manner of unearthly notions. But Franzchen entered at this moment with the steaming coffee-pot; and the whole three, taking thought again, laughed outright at their folly.

Angelica, the elder of the Osters, was engaged to an