While these reports were rife in the neighborhood, our Grandmother Hawkins turned a deaf ear, or threw in a good-humored, sarcastic word to the marvel-mongers—upon one occasion launching at them and us the time-honored proverb:
"You will never see anything worse than yourselves, my dears."
"I believe you, mistress, honey! for long as I lib on dis yeth, and feared as I is o' ghoses, I nebber see nothin' worse nor myse'f yet—dough, the Lord betune me an' harm, I sartinly saw de debbil once—I did," observed old Cassy, sapiently.
"If no one else takes the Willow Cottage beforehand, just wait until my term is up here, and then if Mr. Buzzard will let it to a small, quiet family on anything like reasonable terms, you'll see how we meet spectres," said our grandmother.
"Too late, Aunt Rachel! The Willow Cottage is let," exclaimed Will Rackaway, who had a few minutes previously joined our party.
"Let, is it? Ah! well, I hope it is not to another rum-seller!"
"No, indeed! to another guess tenant! to Colonel Manly, of the —— regiment, who is now ordered to join General Armistead, in Florida, and who takes the cottage as a pleasant country home for his wife and children during his absence."
"Hum-m me! then we shall have neighbors. I am very well reconciled," said Mrs. Hawkins.
A few weeks after this conversation the new tenants were settled in the Willow Cottage, and the colonel embarked for Florida.
Grandmother Hawkins was rather slow and ceremonious in all her dealings with society. Therefore she "took her time" in calling upon Mrs. Manly. Consequently, upon the very morning that she set out to pay that lady a visit she met a train of furniture drays proceeding from the premises, and heard to her great astonishment that the family were moving away.