When Ghost Meets Ghost

by William De Morgan

"Sakes alive!" said Aunt M'riar, responsive to the knock. "There's no fire here."

"I'm off duty," said the fireman briefly. "I've come to tell you about your young customer at the Hospital."

Aunt M'riar behaved heroically. There was only, to her thinking, one chance in ten that this strange, inexplicable messenger should have brought any other news to their house than that of its darling's death; but that one chance was enough to make her choke back a scream, lest Uncle Mo should have one moment of needless despair. And else—it shot across her mind in a second—might not a sudden escape from despair even be fatal to that weak heart of his? So Aunt M'riar pulled to the door behind her to say, with an effort:—"Is he dead?" The universe swam about outside while she stood still, and something hummed in her head. But through it she heard the fireman say:—"Not he!" as of one endowed with a great vitality, one who would take a deal of killing. When he added:—"He's spoke," though she believed her ears certainly, for she ran back into the kitchen crying out:—"He's spoke, Mo, he's spoke!" she did it with a misgiving that the only interpretation she could see her way to must be wrong—was altogether too good to be true.

Uncle Mo fairly shouted with joy, and this time woke Dolly, who thought it was a calamity, and wept. Fully five minutes of incoherent rejoicing followed, and then details might be rounded off. The fireman had to stand by his engine on the night-shift in an hour's time, but he saw his way to a pipe, and lit it.

"They're always interested to hear the ending-up of things at the Station," said he, to account for himself and his presence, "and I made it convenient to call round at the Ward. The party that took the child from me happened to be there, and knew me again." He, of course—but you would guess this—was Peter Jackson of Engine 67A. He continued:—"The party was so obliging as to take me into the Ward to the bedside. And it was while I was there the little chap began talking. The party asked me to step in and mention it to you, ma'am, or his uncle, seeing it was in my road to the Station." Then Peter Jackson seemed to feel his words needed extenuation or revision. "Not but I would have gone a bit out of the way, for that matter!" said he.

"'Twouldn't be any use my looking round now, I suppose?" said Uncle Mo. Because he always was that restless and fidgety.

"Wait till to-morrow, they said, the party and the nurse. By reason the child might talk a bit and then get some healthy sleep. What he's had these few days latterly don't seem to count." Thus Peter Jackson, and Uncle Moses said he had seen the like. And then all three of them made the place smokier and smokier you could hardly make out across the room.

"Mo's an impatient old cock, you see!" said Mr. Alibone, who seemed to understand Peter Jackson, and vice versa. And Uncle Mo said:—"I suppose I shall have to mark time." To which the others replied that was about it.

"Only whatever did the young child say, mister?" said Aunt M'riar; like a woman's curiosity, to know. But those other two, they was curious underneath-like; only denied it.

"I couldn't charge my memory for certain, ma'am," said Peter Jackson, "and might very easy be wrong." He appeared to shrink from the responsibility of making a report, but all his hearers were agreed that there was no call to cut things so very fine as all that. A rough outline would meet the case.