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Page 60
"'I'll be real careful,' says I. I knew she set a sight by that
painted tumbler.
"The water seemed to do Mrs. Dennison good, for presently she
pushed Mrs. Bird away and sat up. She had been laying down on my
bed.
"'I'm all over it now,' says she, but she was terribly white, and
her eyes looked as if they saw something outside things. Mrs. Bird
wasn't much better, but she always had a sort of settled sweet,
good look that nothing could disturb to any great extent. I knew I
looked dreadful, for I caught a glimpse of myself in the glass, and
I would hardly have known who it was.
"Mrs. Dennison, she slid off the bed and walked sort of tottery to
a chair. 'I was silly to give way so,' says she.
"'No, you wasn't silly, sister,' says Mrs. Bird. 'I don't know
what this means any more than you do, but whatever it is, no one
ought to be called silly for being overcome by anything so
different from other things which we have known all our lives.'
"Mrs. Dennison looked at her sister, then she looked at me, then
back at her sister again, and Mrs. Bird spoke as if she had been
asked a question.
"'Yes,' says she, 'I do think Miss Arms ought to be told--that is,
I think she ought to be told all we know ourselves.'
"'That isn't much,' said Mrs. Dennison with a dying-away sort of
sigh. She looked as if she might faint away again any minute. She
was a real delicate-looking woman, but it turned out she was a good
deal stronger than poor Mrs. Bird.
"'No, there isn't much we do know,' says Mrs. Bird, 'but what
little there is she ought to know. I felt as if she ought to when
she first came here.'
"'Well, I didn't feel quite right about it,' said Mrs. Dennison,
'but I kept hoping it might stop, and any way, that it might never
trouble her, and you had put so much in the house, and we needed
the money, and I didn't know but she might be nervous and think she
couldn't come, and I didn't want to take a man boarder.'
"'And aside from the money, we were very anxious to have you come,
my dear,' says Mrs. Bird.
"'Yes,' says Mrs. Dennison, 'we wanted the young company in the
house; we were lonesome, and we both of us took a great liking to
you the minute we set eyes on you.'
"And I guess they meant what they said, both of them. They were
beautiful women, and nobody could be any kinder to me than they
were, and I never blamed them for not telling me before, and, as
they said, there wasn't really much to tell.
"They hadn't any sooner fairly bought the house, and moved into it,
than they began to see and hear things. Mrs. Bird said they were
sitting together in the sitting-room one evening when they heard it
the first time. She said her sister was knitting lace (Mrs.
Dennison made beautiful knitted lace) and she was reading the
Missionary Herald (Mrs. Bird was very much interested in mission
work), when all of a sudden they heard something. She heard it
first and she laid down her Missionary Herald and listened, and
then Mrs. Dennison she saw her listening and she drops her lace.
'What is it you are listening to, Abby?' says she. Then it came
again and they both heard, and the cold shivers went down their
backs to hear it, though they didn't know why. 'It's the cat,
isn't it?' says Mrs. Bird.
"'It isn't any cat,' says Mrs. Dennison.
"'Oh, I guess it MUST be the cat; maybe she's got a mouse,' says
Mrs. Bird, real cheerful, to calm down Mrs. Dennison, for she saw
she was 'most scared to death, and she was always afraid of her
fainting away. Then she opens the door and calls, 'Kitty, kitty,
kitty!' They had brought their cat with them in a basket when they
came to East Wilmington to live. It was a real handsome tiger cat,
a tommy, and he knew a lot.
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