The Real Charlotte. 229 



time she was back again, uttering pants of exhaustion and 

 alarm, but holding the keys in her hand. 



" Oh," she said, " I thought every minute I heard him 

 coming to the door ! Here they are for you, Charlotte, take 

 them ! I'll not have anything more to say to them." 



She flung the keys into Miss Mullen's lap, and prepared 

 to sink into her chair again. Charlotte jumped up, and the 

 keys rattled on to the floor. 



"And d'ye think I'd lay a finger on them? " she said, in 

 such a voice that Mrs. Lambert checked herself in the 

 action of sitting down, and Muffy fled under his mistress's 

 chair and barked in angry alarm. " Pick them up yourself! 

 It's no affair of mine ! " She pointed with a fateful finger at 

 the keys, and Mrs. Lambert obediently stooped for them. 

 " Now, there's the desk, ye'd better not lose any more time, 

 but get it down." 



The shelf on which the desk stood was the highest one of 

 a small book-case, and was just above the level of Mrs. 

 Lambert's head, so that when, after many a frightened look 

 out of the window, she stretched up her short arms to take 

 it down, she found the task almost beyond her. 



" Come and help me, Charlotte," she cried ; " I'm afraid 

 it'll fall on me ! " 



" I'll not put a hand to it," said Charlotte, without moving, 

 while her ugly, mobile face twitched with excitement ; *' it's 

 you have the right and no one else, and I'd recommend ye 

 to hurry ! " 



The word hurry acted electrically on Mrs. Lambert ; she 

 put forth all her feeble strength, and lifting the heavy de- 

 spatch-box from the shelf, she staggered with it to the 

 dinner-table. 



" Oh, it's the weight of the house ! " she gasped, collap- 

 sing on to a chair beside it. 



" Here, open it now quickly, and we'll talk about the 

 weight of it afterwards" said Charlotte so imperiously that 

 Mrs. Lambert, moved by a power that was scarcely her own, 

 fumbled through the bunch for the key. 



" There it is ! Don't you see the Bramah key ? " ex- 

 claimed Charlotte, hardly repressing the inclination to call 

 her friend a fool and to snatch the bunch from her ; " press 

 it in hard now, or ye'il not get it to turn.'* 



