Lizzie stopped and again made a sound like that of a hen with the pip, and I knew it to be a token of her contempt for me.
“I don't believe there is any Santa Claus,” she remarked, presently.
I had been thinking of that. The faith of my childhood was failing a little, but I clung to the dear old saint and could not let him go. However, I was on the brink of change.
In a moment Lizzie put her hand in my coat-pocket.
“There,” said she, “see what you've got now.”
I felt, and upon my word there was something hard in my pocket wrapped in tissue-paper, and it felt very promising.
“It's a real horruck,” said she; “I am going to give it to you.”
Then I saw her hand moving before my face. I put up my own hand, but hers began to fly around in the air, and I could not touch it. Now I suddenly remembered that ghosts had a trick of that kind, for so the washerwoman had informed me. For the first time I began to think of the word, and felt its mystery. Lizzie stood shivering, and a sound came out of her mouth like wind whistling in a chimney.
“You go 'way!” I cried, in a fright.
Lizzie turned and looked at me and uttered a cry of fear, and began to run. Her clothes had a strange rustle, and I could scarcely see her in the darkness. She seemed to run up a stairway into the snowy air, and was out of sight in a jiffy. Then I could hear her screaming to me in a dark tree-top, as if she saw something terrible.