“Don't say 'sir' all the time,” I told him.
“Beg pardon, sir,” he rejoined: “but it's a habit. I've tried very hard to fit myself to English ways and it's got to be second nature, sir. My voice I can't change; but my class—I was a barber in America, sir—my class I have learned. And,” he repeated rather vacantly, “I just dropped by to see if you wanted a ghost. Being fellow Americans, you know, I thought——” His voice trailed off into humble silence, and he stood twisting a shadowy hat round and round in his fingers.
“See here!” I said. “Should we have a ghost?”
“Beg pardon, sir, but how much rent do you pay?” I told him.
He answered politely but with decision, “Then, sir, in all fairness, you are entitled to a ghost with the place. It gives a certain tone, sir.”
“Why weren't we given one, then?” I asked
“Well——” he said, and paused. If a ghost can blush with embarrassment, he blushed. “You see,” he went on, making it as easy for me as he could, “English ghosts mostly object to haunting Americans, just as American ghosts find it difficult to get places in English houses and cottages. You see, sir, we are——”
He halted lamely, and then finished, “We're so American somehow, sir.”
“But we've been cheated!” I said.
“Yes, sir,” said the American ghost, “regularly had” He said it in quite an English manner, and I complimented him on his achievement. He smiled with a child's delight.