"What! you did see a ghost?"
"Ay, I did."
Valentine concealed his disappointment as well as he could, and went on.
"You told me the orchard of pear-trees and cherry-trees was all in blossom, as white as snow. Now don't you think, as it was so very early, almost at dawn, that what you saw really might have been a young cherry-tree standing all in white, but that you, being frightened, took it for a ghost?"
"The sperit didn't walk in white," she answered; "I never said it was in white."
"Why, my good woman, you said it was in a shroud!"
"Ay, I told the gentleman when he took it down, the ghost were wrapped up in a cloak, a long cloak, and he said that were a shroud."
"But don't you know what a shroud is?" exclaimed Valentine, a good deal surprised. "What is the dress called hereabout, that a man is buried in?"
"His buryin' gown. 'Tis only a sperit, a ghost, that walks in a shroud. I'n told that oft enough, I should know." She spoke in a querulous tone, as one having reasonable cause for complaint.
"Well," said Valentine, after a pause, "if the shroud was not white, what colour was it?"