re addicted to bad language," said the
Duchess.

"How did he know they were swearing? Could he hear them?" asked Dear
Jones.

"That was just it," responded Uncle Larry; "he could not hear them--at
least not distinctly. There were inarticulate murmurs and stifled
rumblings. But the impression produced on him was that they were
swearing. If they had only sworn right out, he would not have minded it
so much, because he would have known the worst. But the feeling that
the air was full of suppressed profanity was very wearing and after
standing it for a week, he gave up in disgust and went to the White
Mountains."

"Leaving them to fight it out, I suppose," interjected Baby Van
Rensselaer.

"Not at all," explained Uncle Larry. "They could not quarrel unless he
was present. You see, he could not leave the titular ghost behind him,
and the domiciliary ghost could not leave the house. When he went away
he took the family ghost with him leaving the house ghost behind. Now
spooks can't quarrel when they are a hundred miles apart any more than
men can."

"And what happened afterward?" asked Baby Van Rensselaer, with a pretty
impatience.

"A most marvelous thing happened. Eliphalet Duncan went to the White
Mountains, and in the car of the railroad that runs to the top of Mount
Washington he met a classmate whom he had not seen for years, and this
classmate introduced Duncan to his sister, and this sister was a
remarkably pretty girl, and Duncan fell in love with her at first
sight, and by the time he got to the top of Mount Washington he was so
deep in love that he began to consider his own unworthiness, and to
wonder whether she might ever be induced to care for him a little--ever
so little."

"I don't think that is so marvelous a thing," said Dear Jones glancing
at Baby Van Rensselaer.

"Who was she?" asked the Duchess, who had once lived in Philadelphia.

"She was Miss Kitty Sutton, of San Francisco, and she was a daughter of
old Judge Sutton, of the firm of Pixley and Sutton."

"A very respectable family," assented the Duchess.

"I hope she wasn't a daughter of that loud and vulgar old Mrs. Sutton
whom I met at Saratoga, one summer, four or five years ago?" said Dear
Jones.

"Probably she was."

"She was a horrid old woman. The boys used to call her Mother Gorgon."

"The pretty Kitty Sutton with whom Eliphalet Duncan had fallen in love
was the daughter of Mother Gorgon. But he never saw the mother, who was