"Oho!" cried Terwilliger; "it's a question of wages, is it? The Bangletops were hard up?"
"'Ard up? The Baingletops?" laughed the ghost. "When they gets 'ard up the Baink o' Hengland will be in all the sixty soups mentioned in that there book."
"You seem to be up in the vernacular," returned Terwilliger, with a smile.
"I'll bet you are an old fraud of a modern ghost."
Here he discharged all six chambers of his pistol into the body of the spectre.
"No taikers," retorted the ghost, as the bullets whistled through her chest, and struck deep into the wall on the other side of the kitchen. "That's a noisy gun you've got, but you carn't ly a ghost with cold lead hany more than you can ly a corner-stone with a chicken. H'I'm 'ere to sty until I gets me waiges."
[Illustration]
"What was the amount of your wages due at the time of your discharge?" asked Hankinson.
"H'I was gettin' ten pounds a month," returned the spectre.
"Geewhittaker!" cried Terwilliger, "you must have been an all-fired fine cook."
"H'I was," assented the ghost, with a proud smile. "H'I cooked a boar's 'ead for 'is Royal 'Ighness King Charles when 'e visited Baingletop 'All as which was the finest 'e hever taisted, so 'e said, hand 'e'd 'ave knighted me hon the spot honly me sex wasn't suited to the title. 'You carn't make a knight out of a woman,' says the king, 'but give 'er my compliments, and tell 'er 'er monarch says as 'ow she's a cook as is too good for 'er staition.'"