orn, once handsome furniture, and the portly metal
teapot, which replaced the silver one, long since parted with for half
its value in current coin. The only modern article in the room,
excepting the aforesaid nephew and niece, was a pretty, though
inexpensive, pianoforte, which stood under a black-looking portrait of a
severe-visaged lady with her waist just under her arms, and a general
resemblance, as irreverent Aubrey said, to a yard and a half of pump
water.

Just now Miss Clare was consuming toast in silence, and Kate was
wondering if there was any way of making bows that had been washed twice
and turned three times look like new; while Aubrey's handsome head was
bent over a book, for he was addicted to replenishing mind and body at
the same time. Suddenly Miss Clare exclaimed, "Dear me; it is fifty
years to-day since Marjorie Westford died!"

Kate glanced up at the pump-water lady, with the laconic remark,
"Fancy!"

"It's very likely that on such an interesting anniversary the fair Miss
Marjorie may revisit her former haunts," said Aubrey, raising a pair of
glorious dark eyes with a mischievous smile; "so if you hear an
unearthly bumping and squealing in the small hours, you may know who it
is."

"The idea of a ghost 'bumping and squealing,'" laughed Kate. "And Miss
Marjorie, too! The orthodox groan and glide would be more like her
style." Then her mind wandered to a story connected with that lady,
which had given rise to much speculation on the part of the young
Clares. Half a century ago there lived at the Briars a family consisting
of a brother and two sisters; the former a gay young spendthrift of
twenty-five; the girls, Anna, aged twenty, and Lucy, the present Miss
Clare, nine years old respectively. With them resided a maiden sister of
their mother's, Marjorie Westford, an eccentric person, whose property
at her death reverted to a distant relative. A short time before she
died she divided her few trinkets and personal possessions between the
three young people, bequeathing to Anna, in addition, a sealed letter,
to be read on her twenty-first birthday. The girl hid the packet away
lest she should be tempted to read it before the appointed time; but ere
that arrived she was drowned by the upsetting of a boat, and never since
had the concealed letter been found, although every likely place had
been searched for it. Lucy never married, and George had but one son,
whose wife died soon after the birth of Ka