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Page 38
"No, I do not," replied Miss stark with emphasis.
"Nor in the same bed?" persisted Eliza Lippincott with a kittenish
reflection.
The young minister looked up from his pudding. He was very
spiritual, but he had had poor pickings in his previous boarding
place, and he could not help a certain abstract enjoyment over Miss
Gill's cooking.
"You would certainly not be afraid, Miss Lippincott?" he remarked,
with his gentle, almost caressing inflection of tone. "You do not
for a minute believe that a higher power would allow any
manifestation on the part of a disembodied spirit--who we trust is
in her heavenly home--to harm one of His servants?"
"Oh, Mr. Dunn, of course not," replied Eliza Lippincott with a
blush. "Of course not. I never meant to imply--"
"I could not believe you did," said the minister gently. He was
very young, but he already had a wrinkle of permanent anxiety
between his eyes and a smile of permanent ingratiation on his lips.
The lines of the smile were as deeply marked as the wrinkle.
"Of course dear Miss Harriet Gill was a professing Christian,"
remarked the widow, "and I don't suppose a professing Christian
would come back and scare folks if she could. I wouldn't be a mite
afraid to sleep in that room; I'd rather have it than the one I've
got. If I was afraid to sleep in a room where a good woman died, I
wouldn't tell of it. If I saw things or heard things I'd think the
fault must be with my own guilty conscience." Then she turned to
Miss Stark. "Any time you feel timid in that room I'm ready and
willing to change with you," said she.
"Thank you; I have no desire to change. I am perfectly satisfied
with my room," replied Miss Stark with freezing dignity, which was
thrown away upon the widow.
"Well," said she, "any time, if you should feel timid, you know
what to do. I've got a real nice room; it faces east and gets the
morning sun, but it isn't so nice as yours, according to my way of
thinking. I'd rather take my chances any day in a room anybody had
died in than in one that was hot in summer. I'm more afraid of a
sunstroke than of spooks, for my part."
Miss Sophia Gill, who had not spoken one word, but whose mouth had
become more and more rigidly compressed, suddenly rose from the
table, forcing the minister to leave a little pudding, at which he
glanced regretfully.
Miss Louisa Stark did not sit down in the parlour with the other
boarders. She went straight to her room. She felt tired after her
journey, and meditated a loose wrapper and writing a few letters
quietly before she went to bed. Then, too, she was conscious of a
feeling that if she delayed, the going there at all might assume
more terrifying proportions. She was full of defiance against
herself and her own lurking weakness.
So she went resolutely and entered the southwest chamber. There
was through the room a soft twilight. She could dimly discern
everything, the white satin scroll-work on the wall paper and the
white counterpane on the bed being most evident. Consequently both
arrested her attention first. She saw against the wall-paper
directly facing the door the waist of her best black satin dress
hung over a picture.
"That is very strange," she said to herself, and again a thrill of
vague horror came over her.
She knew, or thought she knew, that she had put that black satin
dress waist away nicely folded between towels in her trunk. She
was very choice of her black satin dress.
She took down the black waist and laid it on the bed preparatory to
folding it, but when she attempted to do so she discovered that the
two sleeves were firmly sewed together. Louisa Stark stared at the
sewed sleeves. "What does this mean?" she asked herself. She
examined the sewing carefully; the stitches were small, and even,
and firm, of black silk.
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