In Miss Emily, it took the form of--how strange a word to use in connection with her!--of furtive watchfulness. I felt that Maggie's entrance, with nothing more momentous than the tea-tray, set her upright in her chair, put an edge to her soft voice, and absorbed her. She was still attentive to what I said. She agreed or dissented. But back of it all, with her eyes on me, she was watching Maggie. With Maggie the antagonism took no such subtle form. It showed itself in the second best instead of the best china, and a tendency to weak tea, when Miss Emily took hers very strong. And such was the effect of their mutual watchfulness and suspicion, such perhaps was the influence of the staid old house on me, after a time even that fact, of the strong tea, began to strike me as incongruous. Miss Emily was so consistent, so consistently frail and dainty and so--well, unspotted seems to be the word--and so gentle, yet as time went on I began to feel that she hated Maggie with a real hatred. And there was the strong tea! Indeed, it was not quite normal, nor was I. For by that time--the middle of July it was before I figured out as much as I have set down in five minutes--by that time I was not certain about the house. It was difficult to say just what I felt about the house. Willie, who came down over a Sunday early in the summer, possibly voiced it when he came down to his breakfast there. "How did you sleep?" I asked. "Not very well." He picked up his coffee-cup, and smiled over it rather sheepishly. "To tell the truth, I got to thinking about things--the furniture and all that," he said vaguely. "How many people have sat in the chairs and seen themselves in the mirror and died in the bed, and so on." Maggie, who was bringing in the toast, gave a sort of low moan, which she turned into a cough. "There have been twenty-three deaths in it in the last forty years, Mr. Willie," she volunteered. "That's according to the gardener. And more than half died in that room of yours." "Put down that toast before you drop it, Maggie," I said. "You're shaking all over. And go out and shut the door." "Very well," she said, with a meekness behind which she was both indignant and frightened. "But there is one word I might mention before I go, and that is--cats!" "Cats!" said Willie, as she slammed the door. "I think it is only one cat," I observed mildly. "It belongs to Miss Emily, I fancy. It manages to be in a lot of places nearly simultaneously, and Maggie swears it is a dozen." Willie is not subtle. He is a practical young man with a growing family, and a tendency the last year or two to flesh. But he ate his breakfast thoughtfully. "Don't you think it's rather isolated?" he asked finally. "Just you three women here?" I had taken Delia, the cook, along.