We both heard the shutter above our heads suddenly thrown open, but darkness hid anyone who might have been listening.
"Hm!" said the priest. "Overheard! Fine conspirators we are! Some eavesdropper!"
"Hush!" and remembering whose window it was, I held him; for he would have stalked away.
"Are you there?" came a clear, gentle voice, that fell from the window in the breaking ripples of a fountain plash.
The bit of statuary had become suddenly animate and was not so marble-cold to mankind as it looked. Thinking we had been taken for an expected lover, I, too, was moving off, when the voice, that sounded like the dropping golden notes of a cremona, called out in tones of vibrating alarm:
"Don't--don't go! Priest! Priest! Father! It's you I'm speaking to. I've heard every word!"
Father Holland and I were too much amazed to do aught but gape from each other to the dark window. We could now see the outlines of a white face there.
"If you'd please put one bench on top of another, and balance a bucket on that, I think I could get down," pleaded the low, thrilling voice.
"An' in the name of the seven wonders of creation, what for would you be getting down?" asked the astonished priest.
"Oh! Hurry! Are you getting the bench?" coaxed the voice.
"Faith an' we're not! And we have no thought of doing such a thing!" began the good man with severity.
"And break your pretty neck," answered the ungallant father with indignation.
There was a rustling of skirts being gathered across the window sill and outlines of a white face gave place to the figure of a frail girl preparing for a leap.
"Don't!" I cried, genuinely alarmed, with a mental vision of shattered statuary on the ground. "Don't! I'm getting the benches," and I piled them up, with a rickety bucket on top. "Wait!" I implored, stepping up on the bottom bench. "Give me your hand," and as I caught her hands, she leaped from the window to the bucket, and the bucket to the ground, with a daintiness, which I thought savored of experience in such escapades.
"What do you mean, young woman?" demanded Father Holland in anger. "I'll have none of your frisky nonsense! Do you know, you baggage, that you are delaying this young man in a matter that is of life-and-death importance? Tell me this instant, what do you want?"