“‘I am sorry, sir,’ she said, ‘I must give notice. I am by no means nervous, indeed I have always laughed at ghosts, but there is something unmistakably the matter with this place, especially the garden!’
“‘The garden!’ I exclaimed, ‘Come, it’s the first time I have heard there’s anything amiss with the garden.’
“‘But not the last, I’ll warrant you,’ she remarked caustically. ‘Why sir, unless I am very much mistaken, the origin of the disturbances lies in that garden, over there,’ and she shot a bony forefinger (why should housekeepers invariably have bony fingers?) in the direction of the filled-in pond. ‘As I was gathering some lettuce there last night I felt (I could see nothing) some horribly cold and sticky thing clasp me in its arms. It must have been hiding among the raspberry canes. Struggling with all my might I managed to free myself just as a mass of fetid jelly was closing over my throat and mouth. Oh! how desperately I struggled, and what a blessed relief it was to be free from that loathsome presence. I can assure you, sir, I ran across the garden as fast as any girl, nor did I pause for one second, till Johnson and one of the maids came to my assistance. They did not ask me what had happened, bless you sir, they knew! Nor was a word said about it at supper, no one dare even as much as mention the thing by gaslight!’
“It was useless, Mr. O’Donnell, to try and persuade the woman to remain with me after THAT, she went and, by the bye, I have just heard she has recently undergone an operation for tumour in some provincial hospital.
“With my next housekeeper I was rather more fortunate. She stayed with me for more than six months before showing any of the usual signs of restlessness.
“Then she came to the point without the least embarrassment, springing her surprise on me over the breakfast cups.
“‘I must leave!’ she said demurely, proceeding at the same time to pour out the coffee, ‘there is a certain dampness here that is very trying to one subject to rheumatism, as well as to one’s nerves.’
“I started guiltily. ‘A dampness! Nerves! you astonish me,’ I stammered, ‘pray explain yourself.’ She did so.
“‘What I mean is,’ she observed, ‘that I can never enter the lower part of the kitchen garden without being persistently followed by a “mist”—I should have put it down to mere imagination, had I not accidentally heard some one speak about the ghost, and I at once concluded that the mist must in some way be connected with it—am I not right?’
“Of course I assented—what else could I do?