"Just as you please, Sophonisba," said Miss Faithful.
"He says he'll give us a bit of ground down on the flat for a garden, and let his man dig it up for us. I went up and looked at the house. It ain't so much out of repair as you'd think."
"Did you see the burnt spot on the floor?" asked Miss Faithful with some interest.
"Yes, I saw it--a great blackened place. Most likely he spilled some of his chemical stuff on it."
Miss Sophonisba was not, as she expressed herself, one to let the grass grow under her feet. She concluded the bargain for the house next day, and informed their landlord--who, by the by, was a son of their old neighbor, Widow Ball--of their intention to move. That gentleman was not at all pleased at the idea of losing his tenants. In vain he offered to recede from the obnoxious demand of four shillings more. Miss Sophonisba told him that she had made up her mind, and that she wasn't in the habit of going back from her bargains when she had given her word, whatever other people might be.
"Well, Miss T----," said Mr. Ball, "I hope you won't repent. They've said queer things about that house ever since the old doctor went off so mysterious. Some folks said he drowned himself in that place in the cellar."
"Stuff and nonsense!" said Miss Sophonisba. "The old doctor never hurt any one when he was alive, except by borrowing money of them, and it ain't likely he'll want to do that now that he's dead; and if he did, I shouldn't let him have it."
"Well, my mother was in the house when Miss Eldridge came running up the stairs as pale as a sheet, and said he came behind her and caught hold of her shoulder."
"Joanna Eldridge was always a poor, miserable, shiftless, narvy thing," said Miss Sophonisba, "and half the time you couldn't believe a word she said."
"Well she was a connexion of our'n, Miss T----, and I always thought there was something in it. Narves won't account for everything."