One this way and one that, just like mice when the cat appears.
Will you make haste, you night-birds?
Come, will you make haste ?" The girls had learnt to obey, and they hurried past the matron to their sleeping-quarters.

Perpetua, a woman scarcely past fifty, whose face wore a pleasant expression of mingled shrewdness and kindness, stood pricking up her ears and listening; she heard from the water-shed a peculiar low, long-drawn Wheeuh!--a signal with which she was familiar as that by which the prefect Thomas had been wont to call together his scattered household from the garden of his villa on Mount Lebanon.

It was now Paula who gave the whistle to attract her nurse's attention.
Perpetua shook her head anxiously.

What could have brought her beloved child to see her at so late an hour?
Something serious must have occurred, and with characteristic presence of mind she called out, to show that she had heard Paula's signal: "Now, make haste.

Will you be quick?
Wheeuh! girls--wheeuh! Hurry, hurry!" She followed the last of the slave-girls into the sleeping-room, and when she had assured herself that they were all there but the crazy Persian she enquired where she was.