“Gerrls is very frightful!” broke in an unexpected voice; “owld standards like meself maybe wouldn’t feel it!”
A large basket of linen had suddenly blocked the scullery door, and from beneath it a little woman, like an Australian aborigine, delivered herself of this dark saying.
“What are you talking about, Mrs. Griffen?” demanded Mrs. Alexander, turning in vexed bewilderment to her laundress, “what does all this mean?”
“The Lord save us, ma’am, there’s some says it means a death in the house!” replied Mrs. Griffen with unabated cheerfulness, “an’ indeed ’twas no blame for the little gerrls to be frightened an’ they meetin’ it in the passages—”
“Meeting what?” interrupted her mistress. Mrs. Griffen was an old and privileged retainer, but there were limits even for Mrs. Griffen.
“Sure, ma’am, there’s no one knows what was in it,” returned Mrs. Griffen, “but whatever it was they heard it goin’ on before them always in the panthry passage, an’ it walkin’ as sthrong as a man. It whipped away up the stairs, and they seen the big snout snorting out at them through the banisters, and a bare back on it the same as a pig; and the two cheeks on it as white as yer own, and away with it! And with that Mary Anne got a wakeness, and only for Willy Fennessy bein’ in the kitchen an’ ketching a hold of her, she’d have cracked her head on the range, the crayture!”
Here Barnet smiled with ineffable contempt.
“What I’m tellin’ them is,” continued Mrs. Griffen, warming with her subject, “maybe that thing was a pairson that’s dead, an’ might be owin’ a pound to another one, or has something that way on his soul, an’ it’s in the want o’ some one that’ll ax it what’s throublin’ it. The like o’ thim couldn’t spake till ye’ll spake to thim first. But, sure, gerrls has no courage—”
Barnet’s smile was again one of wintry superiority.
“Willy Fennessy and Patsey Crimmeen was afther seein’ it too last night,” went on Mrs. Griffen, “an’ poor Willy was as much frightened! He said surely ’twas a ghost. On the back avenue it was, an’ one minute ’twas as big as an ass, an’ another minute it’d be no bigger than a bonnive—”