"Isn't that a rather queer place for a wardrobe? I wonder if she keeps anything else there besides the boots and the trowel and the 'sprinkle-pot'?"
"I believe she has an umbrella and some flower-seeds."
"Now, if she only had a Swedish cooking-box and a patent camp-lounge," said Putnam laughing, "she could keep house here in regular style."
"She spends a great deal of time here: her children are all here, she told me."
"Well, it's an odd taste to live in a burying-ground, but one might do worse perhaps. There's nothing like getting accustomed gradually to what you've got to come to. And then if one must select a cemetery for a residence, this isn't a bad choice. Have you noticed what quaint old ways they have about it? At sunset the sexton rings a big bell that hangs in the arch over the gateway: he told me he had done it every day for twenty years. It's not done, I believe, on the principle of firing a sunset gun, but to let people walking in the grounds know the gate is to be shut. There's a high stone wall, you know, and somebody might get shut in all night. Think of having to spend the night here!"
"I have spent the night here often," she answered, again in an absent voice and as if murmuring to herself.
"You have?" exclaimed Putnam. "Oh, you slept in the tool-chest, I suppose, on the old lady's shake-down."
She was silent, and he began to have a weird suspicion that she had spoken in earnest. "This is getting interesting," he said to himself; and then aloud, "You must have seen queer sights. Of course, when the clock struck twelve all the ghosts popped out and sat on their respective tombstones. The ghosts in this cemetery must be awfully old fellows. It doesn't look as if they had buried any one here for a hundred and thirty-five years. I've often thought it would be a good idea to inscribe Complet over the gate, as they do on a Paris omnibus."
"You speak very lightly of the dead," said the young girl in a tone of displeasure and looking directly at him.
Putnam felt badly snubbed. He was about to attempt an explanation, but her manner indicated that she considered the conversation at an end. She gathered up her skirts and prepared to leave the summer-house. The water had soaked away somewhat into the gravel.