I laughed at these promises, looking upon them as the lightest of jests; but the very next day I met a workman upon the staircase, and Mr. Rayner asked me mysteriously at dinner whether I had seen his familiar spirit about, adding that the spirit wore a paper cap and a dirty artisan’s suit, and smelt of beer. That spirit pervaded the house for two days. I met him in the garden holding very unspiritual converse with Jane; I met him in my room taking the measure of my bedstead; I met him in the passage carrying what looked like thin sheets of tin and rolls of wall-paper, and I heard sounds of heavy boots in the turret above my room. Then I saw no more of him; but still there were unaccustomed sounds over my head, sounds of footsteps and knocking, and I met sometimes Jane and sometimes Sarah coming out of a door which I had never known unlocked before, but which I now discovered led to a narrow staircase that I guessed was the way to the turret. On the fourth day, when I went to my room to dress for tea, I found it all dismantled, the bed and most of the furniture gone, and little Jane pulling down my books from their shelf and enjoying my discomfiture with delighted giggles, not at all disconcerted at being caught taking an unheard-of liberty. “What does this mean, Jane? I can’t sleep on the floor; and what are you doing with my books?” I cried in one breath. “I don’t know nothing about it, miss; it’s Mr. Rayner’s orders,” said she, with another irrepressible snigger at my bewildered face. I was turning to the door to wander forth, I did not know exactly whither, to try to find an explanation of this most extraordinary state of things, when Sarah came in, her dark frowning face offering a strong contrast to that of the laughing Jane. “Sarah, can you tell me what this means?” said I. “Mr. Rayner has ordered the room in the turret to be prepared for you,” said she shortly. “Perhaps you will be kind enough to manage down here till after tea, as it’s his orders that you shouldn’t be shown up till the room is quite ready.” I answered that I could manage very well, and they left the room. I said nothing at tea about my adventure, reflecting that perhaps some surprise for me was intended, which would be sprung upon me at a fitting time. And so it proved. While I was quietly writing in the schoolroom, after tea, Mr. and Mrs. Rayner and Haidee, who had not yet gone to bed, came in and conducted me in a formal procession upstairs, up the narrow winding turret-staircase that I had so often wanted to explore, and, opening the door of the one room the turret contained, Mr. Rayner, in a short but elaborate speech, begged to install me without further ceremony as the “imprisoned princess of the enchanted tower.”