ds and a glass ball she looked into--pretty fair fortunes, too.
I've known of some awfully queer things she told different nurses that
were only too true. She always liked me because I used to jolly her
up, and I stopped to speak to her, and she asked me where I was working.

"Oh, a grand place on the Avenue, Margaret," I told her, "marble stairs
and a fountain in the hall."

"What's the sickness, honey?" she asked, for those darkies are always
curious.

"The patient's got a ghost, Margaret," I said, just to see what she'd
say, "and I'm sorry to say we can't seem to cure her."

"Co'se you cayn't cure her," says she, "no stuff in bottles for that,
honey! What the ghos' want?"

"Nothing at all," said I. "It just sits on the bed and looks."

"Laws, honey, Miss Jessop, but that yer kine's the wors' of all," says
she, staring at me. "She'll jes' have ter leave it onto somebody else,
that's all."

"Why, can you do that?" I asked.

"Sure you can do it," she says. "Was it one that loved her?"

"They all say so," said I.

She struck her hands together.

"I knew it--I knew it!" she cried out. "It's always that-a-way. My
ole mudder she had that ha'nt fer ten years, and it was her half-sister
that brung her up from three years ole! She'll jes' have ter leave it
onto some one."

"Well, I'll tell her so," said I, just in joke, of course.

"You do," says she, solemn as the grave, "you do, Miss Jessop, honey,
an' she'll bless you all her life. You get some one ter say they'll
take that ha'nt off her _right w'ile it's there, so it hears 'em_, and
w'ile there's a witness there ter hear bofe sides, an' you hear to me,
now, she'll go free!"

"I'll certainly tell her, Margaret," I said, and I went on and never
gave it another thought, of course.

We went up to the Elton's camp in Maine all of a sudden, for Miss Elton
got the idea she'd feel better there, and though it was cold as
Greenland, it did seem for a little as if she got a bit more sleep.
But not for long. We slept out on pine-bough beds around a big fire,
for that made more light, and that precious Janet seemed to be fainter,
but she was there, just the same, and the poor girl had lost eighteen
pounds and I felt pretty blue about it. It didn't really look as if we
got ahead any, as I told the doctor, and she hardly spoke all day. I'm
not much for the country, as a rule, it always smells so damp at night,
but the Lord knows I'd have lived there a year