She remembered, too, those fluty whispers that resembled no human voice.
"Lie down, darling, and sleep," she said gently. "I will stay by you."
The boy did not instantly obey. He had a whim to sit up, watching. There was no fear in his wide grey eyes, but it was uncanny to see them searching the shadows of the room and returning always, with a fixed, somnambulistic stare, to the window. Christine had a fancy that children, with the memories of another world clinging to them, have a vision of unseen things denied to older people; and she wondered painfully what was going on in the mind behind this handsome little face. At last, she prevailed upon him to lie down, but it was long before he slept. Even then, she sat on, holding his hand, keeping vigil over him and the two other small sleepers.
They were lovely children. Each head glowed red-gold upon its pillow, and each little profile was of a regularity almost classical, with the pure colouring peculiar to red-haired people. The boy's face was well sprinkled with freckles, but five-year-old Marguerite and little Coral, of four, who were perfect little imps of mischief, had the dainty snow-pink look of daisies growing in a meadow with their faces turned up to God.
It was difficult to connect such fragrant, well-tended flowers with the whistling horror out in the darkness. More, it was absurd, impossible. The girl decided that the whole thing was a bad nightmare which she must shake off. The explanation of it could only be that, half asleep, she had dreamed she heard the tapping and the whispers, and smelled the evil odour. Why should a _Thing_ come and tell her to mind the children? "_Mind the boy._" He was already minded--they were all happy and well cared for in their own home. The boy Roderick must have been dreaming, too, and talking in his sleep. Thus, Christine's clear English mind rejected the whole thing as an illusion, resulting from weariness and the new, strange conditions of her life. Yet there was an Irish side to her that could not so easily dispose of the matter. She remembered with what uneasiness her nights had been haunted from the first. How always, when the dark fell, she had sensed something uncanny, something unseen and menacing, that she could never track to its source. But tonight the sense of hovering evil had taken definite form and direction. It was at the children that harm was directed; the whistling, sighing words had concerned the children only. The girl shivered again at the horrid recollection.