manded, hoarsely.

"What is their names?" quavered Uncle Israel, lighting his candle.

"Their names," returned Mrs. Holmes, with a vast accession of dignity,
"are Gladys Gwendolen and Algernon Paul! Good night!"

Just before dawn, a sheeted spectre appeared at the side of Sarah
Smither's bed, and swore the trembling woman to secrecy. It was long past
sunrise before the frightened handmaiden came to her senses enough to
recall that the voice of the apparition had been strangely like Mrs.
Dodd's.

XVI

Good Fortune

The next morning, Harlan and Dorothy ate breakfast by themselves. There
was suppressed excitement in the manner of Mrs. Smithers, who by this time
had quite recovered from her fright, and, as they readily saw, not wholly
of an unpleasant kind. From time to time she tittered audibly--a thing
which had never happened before.

"It's just as if a tombstone should giggle," remarked Harlan. His tone was
low, but unfortunately, it carried well.

"Tombstone or not, just as you like," responded Mrs. Smithers, as she came
in with the bacon. "I'd be careful 'ow I spoke disrespectfully of
tombstones if I was in your places, that's wot I would. Tombstones is kind
to some and cussed to others, that's wot they are, and if you don't like
the monument wot's at present in your kitchen, you know wot you can do."

After breakfast, she beckoned Dorothy into the kitchen, and "gave
notice."

"Oh, Mrs. Smithers," cried Dorothy, almost moved to tears, "please don't
leave me in the lurch! What should I do without you, with all these people
on my hands? Don't think of such a thing as leaving me!"

"Miss Carr," said Mrs. Smithers, solemnly, with one long bony finger laid
alongside of her hooked nose, "'t ain't necessary for you to run no Summer
hotel, that's what it ain't. These 'ere all be relations of your uncle's
wife and none of his'n except by marriage. Wot's more, your uncle don't
want 'em 'ere, that's wot 'e don't."

Mrs. Smithers's tone was so confident that for the moment Dorothy was
startled, remembering yesterday's vague allusion to "sheeted spectres of
the dead."

"What do you mean?" she demanded.

"Miss Carr," returned Mrs. Smithers, with due dignity, "ever since I come
'ere, I've been invited to shut my 'ead whenever I opened it about that
there cat or your uncle or anythink, as you well knows. I was never one
wot was fond of 'avin' my 'ead shut up."

"Go on," said Dorothy, her curiosity fully ali