o roof-tree! You let ghosts alone,
they will let you alone! 'Freits follow them that look for them!"

CHAPTER XXXIII

AND THE DOOR WAS SHUT

We were poor, very poor indeed in these days. Irma had many a wrinkled
brow and many an anxious heart over the weekly expenses--so much to be
set aside for rent, so much for mysterious things called taxes--which,
seeing no immediate good arise from them, my little rebel hated with all
her heart, and devised all sorts of schemes to evade.

But every week there was the joy of a victory won. Untoward
circumstances had been vanquished--the butcher, the baker had been
settled with or--done without. For sometimes Amelia Craven came to give
us a day's baking, and an array of fragrant scones and girdle-cakes,
which I was taken into the kitchen to see on my return home, gave us the
assurance of not having to starve for many days yet.

I was glad, too, for it was my busy season, and I had to be much from
home. There was, indeed, a certain nondescript Mistress McGrier, who
came to help with the heavier duties of the house. She was the daughter
of one janitor at the college, the wife of yet another (presently
suspended for gross dereliction of duty), and she did some charing to
earn an honest penny. But there was little human to be found about her.
Whisky, poor food, neglect, and actual ill treatment had left her mind
after the pattern of her countenance, mostly blank. Yet I was not sorry
when she stayed, especially as the autumnal days shortened, till near
the time of my return. Mrs. McGrier frankly tarried for her tea, and her
conversation was not enlivening, since she could talk of little save
her sorrows as a wife, and how she was trusting to some one in the
office (meaning me) for the future reinstatement of her erring janitor.

Sometimes, on Sundays, she would bring him, as it were framed and glazed
to a painful pitch of perfection. His red hair was plastered with
pomatum, identical with that which had been used upon his boots. Janitor
McGrier had been a soldier, and always moved as if to words of command
unheard to other mortals. If he had only two yards to go, he started as
if from the halt. His pale blue eyes were fixed in his head, and he
chewed steadily at lozenges of peppermint or cinnamon to hide the
perfume of the glass of "enlivener" with which his wife had bribed him
as an argument for submitting to get up and be dressed.

It was only on such show occasions that