"Why!" she said, "it's a woman. She walks up and down them old stairs,
dressed in white, looking so sorrowfullike, I know there must have been
foul play. And then such noises as we hear overhead! My man says that
it's rats. Rats! I know better!"

I thought that Lucy wanted to believe in ghosts, so I didn't try to
reason with her,--

"For a man convinced against his will
Is of the same opinion still."


Lucy was quite an old woman; and I used to think that washing was too
hard work for her; but she seemed very happy. All the while she was
rubbing the clothes over the wooden washboard, or wringing them out with
her hands, she would be singing old-fashioned songs, such as Jimmy and
Nancy, Auld Robin Gray, and another one beginning "In Springfield
mountain there did dwell." It was very sad!

These songs were chanted, all in one tune. If the words had not been
quaint, and suggestive of a century or more ago, I think the
entertainment would have been monotonous,

Lucy brought the news of the neighborhood. One morning she came in, and
said: "John King's folks thinks an awful sight of themselves, sence
Calline has been off. She has sot herself up marsterly. They have gone
to work now and painted all the trays and paint-kags they can find red,
and filled them with one thing another, and set them round the house. No
good will come of that! When you see every thing painted red, look out
for war; it's a sure sign."