"You mean what Dot thought was a goat?" laughed the older girl. "I believe you!" she went on, caught in the contagion of slang.
"That was before my time in Milton," said Neale, cheerfully. "But I have heard how you Corner House girls laid the ghost that had haunted the old place so long."
They saw two huge pumpkin lanterns grinning a welcome from the gateposts. [Page 173]
"I believe Uncle Peter must have known what it really was," said Ruth, thoughtfully. "But it delighted him, I suppose, to have people talk about the old house, and be afraid to visit him. He was a recluse."
"And a miser, they say," Neale observed bluntly.
"I don't think we should say that," Ruth replied quickly. "Everybody tried to get money from Uncle Peter. Everybody but our mother and father, I guess. That is why he left most everything to us."
"Well," Agnes said, "they all declared he haunted the place himself after he died."
"That's a wicked story!" Ruth sharply exclaimed. "I don't believe there is such a thing as a ghost, anyway!"