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Mrs. Meserve laughed consciously and rather vainly.

“Well, Simon says my face is so expressive I can’t hide anything more than five minutes no matter how hard I try,” said she.”Well, there is some news. Simon came home with it this noon. He heard it in South Dayton. He had some business over there this morning. The old Sargent place is let.”

Mrs. Emerson dropped her sewing and stared.

“You don’t say so!”

“Yes, it is.”

“Who to?”

“Why, some folks from Boston that moved to South Dayton last year. They haven’t been satisfied with the house they had there – it wasn’t large enough. The man has got considerable property and can afford to live pretty well. He’s got a wife and his unmarried sister in the family. The sister’s got money, too. He does business in Boston and it’s just as easy to get to Boston from here as from South Dayton, and so they’re coming here. You know the old Sargent house is a splendid place.”

“Yes, it’s the handsomest house in town, but –”

“Oh, Simon said they told him about that and he just laughed. Said he wasn’t afraid and neither was his wife and sister. Said he’d risk ghosts rather than little tucked-up sleeping-rooms without any sun, like they’ve had in the Dayton house. Said he’d rather risk seeingghosts, than risk being ghosts themselves. Simon said they said he was a great hand to joke.”

“Oh, well,” said Mrs. Emerson, “it is a beautiful house, and maybe there isn’t anything in those stories. It never seemed to me they came very straight anyway. I never took much stock in them. All I thought was – if his wife was nervous.”

“Nothing in creation would hire me to go into a house that I’d ever heard a word against of that kind,” declared Mrs. Meserve with emphasis.”I wouldn’t go into that house if they would give me the rent. I’ve seen enough of haunted houses to last me as long as I live.”

Mrs. Emerson’s face acquired the expression of a hunting hound.

“Have you?” she asked in an intense whisper.

“Yes, I have. I don’t want any more of it.”

“Before you came here?”

“Yes; before I was married – when I was quite a girl.”

Mrs. Meserve had not married young. Mrs. Emerson had mental calculations when she heard that.

“Did you really live in a house that was –” she whispered fearfully.

Mrs. Meserve nodded solemnly.

“Did you really ever – see – anything –”

Mrs. Meserve nodded.

“You didn’t see anything that did you any harm?”

“No, I didn’t see anything that did me harm looking at it in one way, but it don’t do anybody in this world any good to see things that haven’t any business to be seen in it. You never get over it.”

There was a moment’s silence. Mrs. Emerson’s features seemed to sharpen.

“Well, of course I don’t want to urge you,” said she, “if you don’t feel like talking about it; but maybe it might do you good to tell it out, if it’s on your mind, worrying you.”

“I try to put it out of my mind,” said Mrs. Meserve.

“Well, it’s just as you feel.”

“I never told anybody but Simon,” said Mrs. Meserve.”I never felt as if it was wise perhaps. I didn’t know what folks might think. So many don’t believe in anything they can’t understand, that they might think my mind wasn’t right. Simon advised me not to talk about it. He said he didn’t believe it was anything supernatural, but he had to own up that he couldn’t give any explanation for it to save his life. He had to own up that he didn’t believe anybody could. Then he said he wouldn’t talk about it. He said lots of folks would sooner tell folks my head wasn’t right than to own up they couldn’t see through it.”