I laughed a little.
“No, Mary, I don't believe it is very safe.”
“Yes, miss. And that's not all. There is doin's I don't like in this house, and I'd have come to you before, but it seems like I've made you so much trouble in this place and you've been lookin' peaky—”
“You've been a perfect godsend to me, Mary!” I cried. “Please tell me anything, everything. Never hesitate to come to me. Never delay an instant.”
“Well, ma'am, there's two or three things that has been vexin' me, little things in themselves, but not reg'lar—now, that's what I say, ma'am, you can stand anything so long as it's reg'lar. In the old country now, as I told you, I worked in a haunted house, and the help was told to expect a ghost and it come reg'lar every night a-draggin' its chains up the stairs; but, bless me, did we mind it? Not a bit.'T was all reg'lar and seemly, if you know what I mean, nothin' that you could n't expect and prepare your mind for. What I don't like about the happenin's here is they're most irreg'lar. There's no tellin' whatever where they'll break out nor how.”
This typically English distinction as to the desirable regularity of apparitions amused me so much that I did not hurry Mary in her story. She got back to it presently.
“Miss Gale, you know that long, gray cloak of yours with the rose-silk linin'?”
“Yes, Mary.” My heart did beat a trifle faster.
“And the little hat you leave with the cloak down in the front hall on the rack behind the door?”
“Yes, Mary.”....