“It’s nothing,” repeated Julia. “Oh, Miss Summerhayes, come back, please, and don’t make a fuss. Mamma is so angry if there’s any fuss made. If I go into my room and look all round, and convince you there’s nobody, will that do? There’s nobody, I know. It’s either a boy passing outside, or it’s an owl or something that lives under the ivy in the wing. Mamma knows. If you ask her to-morrow she’ll tell you; but, oh, for goodness’ sake, Miss Summerhayes, don’t make a fuss to-night.” “Your mother knows? Do you mean that--it has been heard before?” “You look as if you thought it was a ghost,” said Julia, who, however, was very pale. “We have no ghosts in our house.” “It was like the cry of a mad creature--it was----Julia, if it comes again I can’t bear it. It must be some madman who has got in.” “If it’s a madman he can’t get near us,” cried Julia, “for he’s in the wing.” Janet came back into the school-room, still trembling with her fright. She dropped into a chair, unable to support herself. “You know--you know what it is,” she said, faintly. “I know--it’s something in the wing. It does no harm. Sometimes it will cry like that--oh, once in a year, perhaps. It can’t do any harm. Oh, Miss Summerhayes, do be reasonable when I tell you. What does it matter? I don’t know what you mean, to be so taken up with their squalling and shouting, and in such a state when you hear a cry. I don’t care either for one or the other,” Julia said. It cannot be said that Janet showed much interest in the “squalling and shouting” of which her pupil was so contemptuous after this. The two changed their _rôles_ completely for the rest of the evening, during which Julia, though not without a titter for her companion’s weakness, soothed and patronized Miss Summerhayes, and addressed to her many philosophical admonitions, which naturally were much more self-confident even than the exhortations of Janet, in themselves by no means deficient in the certainty of youth. “What can it matter to us,” said Julia, “what a noise is?--unless you happen to like noises which people make, squalling at the top of their voices and call music. A noise can’t hurt you; it can’t do you any harm. You hear it, and that’s all--especially when it’s only like a voice. I am not fond of thunder, myself, for a thunderbolt might fall on the house or crush you; but a cry--what does it matter? People are always crying out, or making some nasty noise. You should pay no attention to it. I never pay any attention; it is not worth while. Why, you might spend your life thinking of such things, if you were to be disturbed by every sound you hear.”