“There isn’t one girl in a thousand,” said the woman, “as had live willingly in a haunted house. Why, Becky, it’s the talk of the neighbourhood!”
“All I can say is,” I replied, “that I have heard nothing of it, and I don’t think Mrs. Preedy has, either.”
“Ah,” remarked the woman, “they say you must go abroad if you want to hear any news about yourself.”
My dear, the woman in the greengrocer’s shop spoke the truth. Before the day was out, it was the talk of the neighbourhood, that both houses, Nos. 118 and 119 Great Porter Square, were haunted. When I went out last evening to write my first letter to you, I was told of it by half-a-dozen people, and the policeman himself (they are all friends of mine) made inquiries as to the time and shapes in which the ghostly visitants presented themselves. And to-day I have observed more than a dozen strangers stop before our house and point up to it, shaking their heads mysteriously.
Mrs. Preedy opened the subject to me this evening.
“Becky,” she said, “there is no end to the wickedness of people.”
“That there isn’t, mum,” I replied, sympathetically.
“Why, Becky,” she exclaimed, “have you heard what they are saying about the house?”
“O, yes,” I said, “everybody says its haunted.”
“Do you believe it, Becky?”