sly and rather vainly.

"Well, Simon says my face is so expressive I can't hide anything more
than five minutes no matter how hard I try," said she. "Well, there is
some news. Simon came home with it this noon. He heard it in South
Dayton. He had some business over there this morning. The old Sargent
place is let."

Mrs. Emerson dropped her sewing and stared.

"You don't say so!"

"Yes, it is."

"Who to?"

"Why, some folks from Boston that moved to South Dayton last year. They
haven't been satisfied with the house they had there--it wasn't large
enough. The man has got considerable property and can afford to live
pretty well. He's got a wife and his unmarried sister in the family.
The sister's got money, too. He does business in Boston and it's just
as easy to get to Boston from here as from South Dayton, and so they're
coming here. You know the old Sargent house is a splendid place."

"Yes, it's the handsomest house in town, but--"

"Oh, Simon said they told him about that and he just laughed. Said he
wasn't afraid and neither was his wife and sister. Said he'd risk
ghosts rather than little tucked-up sleeping-rooms without any sun,
like they've had in the Dayton house. Said he'd rather risk SEEING
ghosts, than risk being ghosts themselves. Simon said they said he was
a great hand to joke."

"Oh, well," said Mrs. Emerson, "it is a beautiful house, and maybe
there isn't anything in those stories. It never seemed to me they came
very straight anyway. I never took much stock in them. All I thought
was--if his wife was nervous."

"Nothing in creation would hire me to go into a house that I'd ever
heard a word against of that kind," declared Mrs. Meserve with
emphasis. "I wouldn't go into that house if they would give me the
rent. I've seen enough of haunted houses to last me as long as I live."

Mrs. Emerson's face acquired the expression of a hunting hound.

"Have you?" she asked in an intense whisper.

"Yes, I have. I don't want any more of it."

"Before you came here?"

"Yes; before I was married--when I was quite a girl."

Mrs. Meserve had not married young. Mrs. Emerson had mental
calculations when she heard that.

"Did you really live in a house that was--" she whispered fearfully.

Mrs. Meserve nodded solemnly.

"Did you really ever--see--anything--"

Mrs. Meserve nodded.

"You didn't see anything that did you any harm?"

"No, I didn't see anything that did me harm loo