There was a large spinning-wheel near the stair door, and at it the young ward of Mrs. Winterose stood spinning.
Before the fire stood a plain deal table, and on it a brass candlestick supporting one tallow candle, that gave but a dim light to the three old ladies who sat before the dull, smouldering green wood fire and worked. Old Mrs. Winterose occupied her arm-chair, between the end of the table and the fireside near the corner cupboard. She was carding rolls of white wool for the spinner.
Miss Libby sat at the other end of the table, reeling off blue yarn from broaches that had just been drawn off the spindle.
Miss Tabby was squeezed into the chimney corner next her sister, knitting a gray stocking.
There was a deep silence, broken only by the sighing of the wind through the leafless trees without, the pattering of the rain against the windows, the whirr of the spinning-wheel at the foot of the stairs, the simmering of the green logs that refused to blaze, and the audible snivelling of Miss Tabby.
The silence grew so oppressive that Miss Tabby, like the child in the Quaker meeting, felt that she must speak, or sob, or suffocate.
"Hallow Eve again," she sighed, "it have come round once more since that awful night, which I shall never be rid on seeing it before me--no, not if I live to be as old as Methusalah! And oh, what gloomy weather! How the wind do moan and the rain do pour 'round the old house! Just like heaving sighs and steaming tears! And as for me, I never feel like nothing but sighs and tears myself whenever this most doleful night comes round again."
And suiting the action to the word, the speaker drew a deep breath and wiped her eyes.
"Tabby, you're always a whimpering. When 'tan't about one thing 'tis about another. Seems to me a woman of your age, turned fifty, ought to have more sense!" sharply commented old Mrs. Winterose, as she took a roll of wool from her card and placed it softly on a pile of others that lay upon the table.
"I can't help of it, mother. I can't, indeed. Whenever this most doleful night do come round again, I feel that low sperreted I don't know what to do. And it is just such a night as that night was. Everything so miserable, outside and in. The wind moaning and the rain drizzling out there, and in here the fire not burning, but just smouldering and smoking as if it was low-sperreted too!" sighed Miss Tabby.