- end_line
- 10719
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T03:55:03.883Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 10609
- text
- ticking in our table. I have put a stop to all that.’
‘Indeed, husband,’ said she, with some incredulity.
‘Yes, wife,’ returned I, perhaps a little vaingloriously, ‘I have put a
quietus upon that ticking. Depend upon it, the ticking will trouble you
no more.’
In vain she besought me to explain myself. I would not gratify her;
being willing to balance any previous trepidation I might have betrayed,
by leaving room now for the imputation of some heroic feat whereby I had
silenced the ticking. It was a sort of innocent deceit by implication,
quite harmless, and, I thought, of utility.
But when I went to breakfast, I saw my wife kneeling at the table again,
and my girls looking ten times more frightened than ever.
‘Why did you tell me that boastful tale,’ said my wife, indignantly.
‘You might have known how easily it would be found out. See this crack,
too; and here is the ticking again, plainer than ever.’
‘Impossible,’ I explained; but upon applying my ear, sure enough, tick!
tick! tick! The ticking was there.
Recovering myself the best way I might, I demanded the bug.
‘Bug?’ screamed Julia. ‘Good heavens, papa!’
‘I hope, sir, you have been bringing no bugs into this house,’ said my
wife, severely.
‘The bug, the bug!’ I cried; ‘the bug under the tumbler.’
‘Bugs in tumblers!’ cried the girls; ‘not _our_ tumblers, papa? You have
not been putting bugs into our tumblers? Oh, what does--what _does_ it
all mean?’
‘Do you see this hole, this crack here?’ said I, putting my finger on
the spot.
‘That I do,’ said my wife, with high displeasure. ‘And how did it come
there? What have you been doing to the table?’
‘Do you see this crack?’ repeated I, intensely.
‘Yes, yes,’ said Julia; ‘that was what frightened me so; it looks so
like witch-work.’
‘Spirits! spirits!’ cried Anna.
‘Silence!’ said my wife. ‘Go on, sir, and tell us what you know of the
crack.’
‘Wife and daughters,’ said I, solemnly, ‘out of that crack, or hole,
while I was sitting all alone here last night, a wonderful----’
Here, involuntarily, I paused, fascinated by the expectant attitudes and
bursting eyes of Julia and Anna.
‘What, what?’ cried Julia.
‘A bug, Julia.’
‘Bug?’ cried my wife. ‘A bug come out of this table? And what did you do
with it?’
‘Clapped it under a tumbler.’
‘Biddy! Biddy!’ cried my wife, going to the door. ‘Did you see a tumbler
here on this table when you swept the room?’
‘Sure I did, marm, and ’bomnable bug under it.’
‘And what did you do with it?’ demanded I.
‘Put the bug in the fire, sir, and rinsed out the tumbler ever so many
times, marm.’
‘Where is that tumbler?’ cried Anna. ‘I hope you scratched it--marked it
some way. I’ll never drink out of that tumbler; never put it before me,
Biddy. A bug--a bug! Oh, Julia! Oh, mamma! I feel it crawling all over
me, even now. Haunted table!’
‘Spirits! spirits!’ cried Julia.
‘My daughters,’ said their mother, with authority in her eyes, ‘go to
your chamber till you can behave more like reasonable creatures. Is it a
bug--a bug that can frighten you out of what little wits you ever had?
Leave the room. I am astonished, I am pained by such childish conduct.’
‘Now tell me,’ said she, addressing me, as soon as they had withdrawn,
‘now tell me truly, did a bug really come out of this crack in the
table?’
‘Wife, it is even so.’
‘Did you see it come out?’
‘I did.’
She looked earnestly at the crack, leaning over it.
‘Are you sure?’ said she, looking up, but still bent over.
‘Sure, sure.’
She was silent. I began to think that the mystery of the thing began to
tell even upon her. Yes, thought I, I shall presently see my wife
shaking and shuddering, and, who knows, calling in some old dominie to
exorcise the table, and drive out the spirits.
- title
- Chunk 1