“More interesting than profitable, I am thinking. Still, the subject might be made instructive and useful as well as amusing.”
“Did you ever see a ghost?” asked Charlie of Gentleman Jo, after Master Lewis left them.
“We thought we had one in our house, when I was living with my sister in Hingham, before the war. Hingham used to be famous for its ghost stories; an old house without its ghost was thought to lack historic tone and finish.”
Gentleman Jo took a story-telling attitude, and a number of the pupils gathered around him.
GENTLEMAN JO’S GHOST STORY.
I shall never forget the scene of excitement, when one morning Biddy, our domestic, entered the sitting-room, her head bobbing, her hair flying, and her cap perched upon the top of her head, and exclaimed: “Wurrah! I have seen a ghoust, and it’s lave the hoose I must. Sich a night! I’d niver pass anither the like of it for the gift o’ the hoose. Bad kick to ye, an’ the hoose is haunted for sure.”
“Why, Biddy, what have you seen?” asked my sister, in alarm.
“Seen? An’ sure I didn’t see nothin’. I jist shet me eyes and hid mesilf under the piller. But it was awful. An’ the way it clanked its chain! O murther!”
This last remark was rather startling. Spirits that clank their chains have a very unenviable reputation.
“Pooh!” said my uncle. “What you heard was nothing but rats.” Then, turning to me, he asked: “Where is the steel trap?”