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At the supper table she met the other boarders–the elderly widow, the young clergyman and the middle-aged librarian. She viewed the elderly widow with reserve, the clergyman with respect, the middle- aged librarian with suspicion. The latter wore a very youthful shirt-waist, and her hair in a girlish fashion which the school- teacher, who twisted hers severely from the straining roots at the nape of her neck to the small, smooth coil at the top, condemned as straining after effects no longer hers by right.

The librarian, who had a quick acridness of manner, addressed her, asking what room she had, and asked the second time in spite of the school-teacher’s evident reluctance to hear her. She even, since she sat next to her, nudged her familiarly in her rigid black silk side.

“What room are you in, Miss Stark?” said she.

“I am at a loss how to designate the room,” replied Miss Stark stiffly.

“Is it the big southwest room?”

“It evidently faces in that direction,” said Miss Stark.

The librarian, whose name was Eliza Lippincott, turned abruptly to Miss Amanda Gill, over whose delicate face a curious colour compounded of flush and pallour was stealing.

“What room did your aunt die in, Miss Amanda?” asked she abruptly.

Amanda cast a terrified glance at her sister, who was serving a second plate of pudding for the minister.

“That room,” she replied feebly.

“That’s what I thought,” said the librarian with a certain triumph. “I calculated that must be the room she died in, for it’s the best room in the house, and you haven’t put anybody in it before. Somehow the room that anybody has died in lately is generally the last room that anybody is put in. I suppose YOU are so strong- minded you don’t object to sleeping in a room where anybody died a few weeks ago?” she inquired of Louisa Stark with sharp eyes on her face.

“No, I do not,” replied Miss stark with emphasis.

“Nor in the same bed?” persisted Eliza Lippincott with a kittenish reflection.

The young minister looked up from his pudding. He was very spiritual, but he had had poor pickings in his previous boarding place, and he could not help a certain abstract enjoyment over Miss Gill’s cooking.

“You would certainly not be afraid, Miss Lippincott?” he remarked, with his gentle, almost caressing inflection of tone. “You do not for a minute believe that a higher power would allow any manifestation on the part of a disembodied spirit–who we trust is in her heavenly home–to harm one of His servants?”

“Oh, Mr. Dunn, of course not,” replied Eliza Lippincott with a blush. “Of course not. I never meant to imply–“

“I could not believe you did,” said the minister gently. He was very young, but he already had a wrinkle of permanent anxiety between his eyes and a smile of permanent ingratiation on his lips. The lines of the smile were as deeply marked as the wrinkle.

“Of course dear Miss Harriet Gill was a professing Christian,” remarked the widow, “and I don’t suppose a professing Christian would come back and scare folks if she could. I wouldn’t be a mite afraid to sleep in that room; I’d rather have it than the one I’ve got. If I was afraid to sleep in a room where a good woman died, I wouldn’t tell of it. If I saw things or heard things I’d think the fault must be with my own guilty conscience.” Then she turned to Miss Stark. “Any time you feel timid in that room I’m ready and willing to change with you,” said she.

“Thank you; I have no desire to change. I am perfectly satisfied with my room,” replied Miss Stark with freezing dignity, which was thrown away upon the widow.

“Well,” said she, “any time, if you should feel timid, you know what to do. I’ve got a real nice room; it faces east and gets the morning sun, but it isn’t so nice as yours, according to my way of thinking. I’d rather take my chances any day in a room anybody had died in than in one that was hot in summer. I’m more afraid of a sunstroke than of spooks, for my part.”