A Little Irish Girl by J. M. Callwell — Read

Notwithstanding Manus's valorous undertaking to come and call her in the morning, Norah took the precaution of getting up after he had gone and drawing back the curtains and pulling up the blind, so that the first gleam of the gray dawn might fall into her room and wake her. She had but just huddled back into bed again when she heard the drawing-room door open and good-nights being exchanged. A minute later the handle of her own door was softly turned and Anstace came in, carefully shading her candle with her hand to keep its light from falling on her little sister's face. Norah closed her eyes tight and feigned to be asleep. She was afraid of Anstace questioning her about her unusual wakefulness, but it gave her an uncomfortable sense of deceit to feel Anstace with cautious touch drawing the tumbled bed-clothes straight, and tucking them in comfortably about her. Then she went away as softly as she had come, and Norah fell asleep and started up, as it seemed to herself, but a few minutes afterwards, to find the window opposite her bed a square of pale-grayish light, and the different objects in the room becoming dimly visible.

It was only after a minute or two's partial bewilderment that she could remember what it was which impended that morning, and why she ought to be awake. In a moment, however, it all came back to her mind, and she slipped hastily out upon the floor. Manus had not come to call her as yet, but it would be well, all the same, to know whether it were already three o'clock or not. A strange, ghostly little figure Norah looked as she stole along the passage and down the stairs in her night-gown and bare feet to where the tall old clock in the hall ticked solemnly on, its ticking sounding ever so much louder now in the silence of the house than it did ordinarily during the day-time.