“Ghostly!” said Zeb. “This village is going to the bad.”
“Zebedee!” exclaimed the Doctor. “Are you so lost as that? Do you believe in ghosts?”
“Firmly,” responded Zeb. “Ogleport is getting full of them. I don’t know what we shall do when Mrs. Wood’s lot get back again for the winter.”
“I must see your father about this,” said the Doctor, with an ominous wag of his head.
“Do, please,” replied Zeb; “I don’t know what’s to become of Mr. Brayton, who seems a deserving young man, or those poor boys from the city.”
The Doctor gazed very hard at Zeb through his spectacles, and half wished that he had his wife with him; but the youth said something about his own cows to the effect that he hoped the ghosts would let them alone, and marched steadily away up the street.
“Remarkable!” exclaimed the Doctor. “Superstition assailing the uneducated intellect of even this favored generation. This must be looked to. I wonder what Mrs. Dryer will say now?”
He wondered less an hour or so later, when he consulted his beloved Dorothy Jane in the presence of Euphemia.
“Father,” said Zeb to the deacon, when he came back from the cow pasture, “if old Sol comes to consult you about supernatural noises and appearances at the Academy, I wish you would humor him a little.”
“Zebedee, what’s up now?”