then, stalking back to the kitchen, muttered to, those
who followed her, "I don't like her face nohow; she looks just like
the milk snakes, when they stick their heads in at the door."

"But you knew how she looked before," said Lucy, the chambermaid.

"I know it," returned Polly; "but when she was here nussin' I never
noticed _her_, more I would any on you; for who'd of thought that Mr.
Hamilton would marry her, when he knows, or or'to know, that nusses
ain't fust cut, nohow; and you may depend on't, things ain't a-goin'
to be here as they used to be."

Here Rachel started up, and related the circumstance of Margaret's
refusing to see "that little evil-eyed-lookin-varmint, with curls
almost like Polly's." Lucy, too, suddenly remembered something which
she had seen, or heard, or made up--so that Mrs. Carter had not been
an hour in the coveted homestead ere there was mutiny against her
afloat in the kitchen; "But," said Aunt Polly, "I 'vises you all to be
civil till she sasses you fust!"

"My dear, what room can Lenora have for her own?" asked Mrs. Hamilton,
as we must now call her, the morning following her marriage.

"Why, really, I don't know," answered the husband; "you must suit
yourselves with regard to that."

"Yes; but I'd rather you'd select, and then no one can blame me," was
the answer.

"Choose any room you please, except the one which Mag and Carrie now
occupy, and rest assured you shall not be blamed," said Mr. Hamilton.

The night before Lenora had appropriated to herself the best chamber,
but the room was so large and so far distant from any one, and the
windows and fireboard rattled so, that she felt afraid, and did not
care to repeat her experiment.

"I 'clar for't!" said Polly, when she heard of it. "Gone right into
the best bed, where even Miss Margaret never goes! What are we all
comin' to? Tell her, Luce, the story of the ghosts, and I'll be bound
she'll make herself scarce in them rooms!"

"Tell her yourself," said Lucy; and when, after breakfast, Lenora,
anxious to spy out everything, appeared in the kitchen, Aunt Polly
called out, "Did you hear anything last night, Miss Lenora?"

"Why, yes--I heard the windows rattle," was the answer; and Aunt
Polly, with an ominous shake of the head, continued:

"There's more than windows rattle, I guess. Didn't you see nothin',
all white and corpse-like, go a-whizzin, and rappin' by your bed?"

"Why, no," said Lenora; "what do you mean?"

So Po