“My child, they have been in their graves for many a day.”
“But their ghosts,” she said, with sweet impatience, “you see them, don’t you?”
“Do you believe in ghosts?” asked the Judge, quietly.
Bethany pursed up her lips. “The air is quite, quite full of them, sir. Every night my mamma stands by the foot of my bed. Last night she waited so patiently until I was undressed. When I was all alone in the room she came forward, she sat down beside me, she put her hand on my forehead. She said, ‘Little daughter, do not be lonely, I am with you.’ Do not your little girls sit beside you at night?”
“No, dear,” said the Judge, very gently.
“How queer,” and Bethany gazed at him as if he were a new and strange kind of puzzle. Then she said, “Please tell me what they were like. Perhaps I will see them.”
“What an imagination,” murmured the Judge, then he said aloud, “Some other time, child.”
Bethany possessed an extraordinary amount of tact for a child of her age, and instead of pursuing the subject she looked round the room. The servants were wrapping up their gifts preparatory to taking them away. Titus was deep in one of the volumes of travel his grandfather had given him.
“Sir,” she said, suddenly turning to the Judge. “There are other ghosts besides children and mothers.”
The Judge quietly bowed his head in token of acquiescence. He would indulge her humor.