"Mother--mother!" she said, "darling, lovely mother! Oh, if you could only talk to me! If you could only tell me all about yourself!"
As she spoke aloud something moved in the garret: a board creaked, a struck chair or table scraped along the uneven floor, and Mrs. Muir appeared round a corner of the piled furniture. Barrie stiffened herself, standing up straight and tall and defiant, ready for battle, holding the portrait as if it were a shield. But she was not prepared to see Mrs. Muir start back, stumbling against something which fell with a sharp crash, nor to hear her give vent to a squeal of terror. It was anger the girl had expected to rouse, not fear, and she faced the old housekeeper from her distance in blank astonishment.
They stood staring at each other across the shadows lit by floating motes of gold; and Mrs. Muir's large, pallid face looked, Barrie thought, as if it had been turned to gray stone, the gray stone of the carved monuments in the family burial-ground. For a moment neither spoke, but at last some words seemed to drop from the old woman's mouth, rather than be deliberately uttered:
"What _is_ the matter?" Barrie exclaimed, the strange spell broken; but instead of answering, Mrs. Muir gasped, and then broke out crying, a queer gurgly sort of crying which frightened the girl. She did not dislike the housekeeper, and she was so genuinely distressed as well as surprised at this strange exhibition, that she would have set down the portrait to run to Mrs. Muir's succour if at that moment the stillness of the garret had not been wakened by the tap, tap of a stick. Somebody was coming up the stairs, hobbling, limping, yet hurrying with extraordinary energy.
There was only one person in the house, or maybe in the world, whose coming made that noise, that mingled hobble, rush, and tap: Grandma.
Barrie and Mrs. Muir continued to stare at one another, but their expression had changed. The approach of a danger to be shared in common had made the enemies friends. "This is going to be awful. What shall we do?" the old eyes said to the young and the young eyes said to the old. Mrs. Muir had forgotten her burning wish and intention to scold Miss Barribel; nevertheless, the housekeeper was not to be trusted as an ally. Under the lash of Mrs. MacDonald's tongue she would defend herself, and Barrie would go to the wall. But the spirit of the martyr was in the girl, and when the first dread thrill of the tap, tap on the garret stairs had subsided in her nerves, she remembered her wrongs and her mother's wrongs, and was not afraid of Grandma. She girded herself for war.