re_? and Hannah said so
too, and then I said I must have dreamed it?'

"'No, I don't remember anything of the kind,' said Maria, without the
slightest emotion. 'I don't remember you ever said anything about any
china-closet. The house has never been altered; you used to play in this
room when you were a child, don't you remember?'

"'I know it,' said mother, in that queer slow voice that made me feel
frightened. 'Hannah, don't you remember my finding the china-closet
here, with the gilt-edge china on the shelves, and then _you_ said that
the _china-closet_ had always been here?'

"'No,' said Hannah, pleasantly but unemotionally--'no, I don't think you
ever asked me about any china-closet, and we haven't any gilt-edged
china that I know of.'

"And that was the strangest thing about it. We never could make them
remember that there had ever been any question about it. You would think
they could remember how surprised mother had been before, unless she had
imagined the whole thing. Oh, it was so queer! They were always
pleasant about it, but they didn't seem to feel any interest or
curiosity. It was always this answer: 'The house is just as it was
built; there have never been any changes, so far as we know.'

"And my mother was in an agony of perplexity. How cold their gray eyes
looked to me! There was no reading anything in them. It just seemed to
break my mother down, this queer thing. Many times that summer, in the
middle of the night, I have seen her get up and take a candle and creep
softly down-stairs. I could hear the steps creak under her weight. Then
she would go through the front room and peer into the darkness, holding
her thin hand between the candle and her eyes. She seemed to think the
little room might vanish. Then she would come back to bed and toss about
all night, or lie still and shiver; it used to frighten me.

"She grew pale and thin, and she had a little cough; then she did not
like to be left alone. Sometimes she would make errands in order to send
me to the little room for something--a book, or her fan, or her
handkerchief; but she would never sit there or let me stay in there
long, and sometimes she wouldn't let me go in there for days together.
Oh, it was pitiful!"

"Well, don't talk any more about it, Margaret, if it makes you feel so,"
said Mr. Grant.

"Oh yes, I want you to know all about it, and there isn't much more--no
more about the room.

"Mother never got well, and she died that