"Cecilia has n't Aunt Octavia's confidence in Providence, so she 's taking a shot at the employment agencies. She has left a note on the kitchen table to inform Aunt Octavia that she had forgotten an engagement with the dentist and has gone to catch the ten-eighteen."
"That, Hezekiah, is a lie. It isn't quite square to deceive your aunt that way," I remarked soberly.
Hezekiah laughed again.
"You absurdity! Don't you know Aunt Octavia yet! She will be perfectly overjoyed when she comes back and finds that note from Cecilia. She likes disappearances, mysteries, and all that kind of thing. But it is barely possible that you will have to wash the dishes. I can't, you see, for I 'm not supposed to come on the reservation at all—not until Cecilia has found a husband. Is n't it perfectly delicious?"
"All of that, Daughter of Kings! I think that as soon as I can regain confidence in my own sanity I shall like it myself. But,"—and I watched her narrowly,—"you see, Hezekiah, there is really a ghost, you know."
Once more that divine mirth in her bubbled mellowly. She had walked guardedly to the window and turned swiftly with a mockery of fear in her face.
"Aunt Octavia approaches, and I must be off. But that ghost, Mr. Chimney-Man,—when you find him, please let me know. There are a lot of things I want to ask some reliable ghost about the hereafter."
With this she fled, and I heard the front door close smartly after her. An instant later Miss Octavia appeared and asked solicitously how I liked my omelette.
"The coachman has been telling me a capital ghost-story. He believes them to be beneficent and declares that he will under no circumstances leave my employment."
She sat down and folded her arms upon the table. For the first time I believed that she was serious. There was, in fact, a troubled look on her sweet, whimsical face. It occurred to me that the loss of her servants was not really the slight matter she had previously made of it.