Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History Bookfrom those of most of the others. There was something of elegance in her movements and more grace than one could mentally connect with a skeleton. She held her head very much to one side and reminded him of the girls he had read about in the old romances, "bending over her tambour frame, with her eyes cast down modestly while her lovely eyes were suffused with tears of sensibility." On one side of the head which was turned to the newspaper man there was a long curl of silky brown hair. This she twisted constantly with her bony fingers and smoothed with apparent affection, a sentiment which the young man understood when, by an unfortunate movement she half turned her head and he saw that there was not another spear of hair on her whole skull. Between a desire to laugh at the utter ridiculousness of her pretension, and pity for the little feminine vanity that made her cling to her one poor lone curl, the young man retired into the shadows made by the decorations, and that is how he happened to hear the conversation of several lady ghosts. As soon as the banquet was finished, the Egyptian princess had been installed in her high chair, and she held audience with as many men as could crowd around her, and so the women were in a measure left to themselves. They gathered into groups and fell to discussing various subjects. Some told of what they had been doing the evening before, when they were abroad in their spiritual form only. One of them said sadly: "I went to the place where my husband and I always loved to be. I thought perhaps he might be there, for he promised me as I lay dying that on every anniversary of my death he would go there. It was there that we had become engaged, and we were so happy there-" "Did he come?" asked she of the lone curl. "Yes; he did come, but he brought another woman with him, and the very things he used to say to me he said to her. He kissed her and told her that he had never loved anyone as he loved her, for such love comes but once in a lifetime. She is the fifth woman to whom I have heard him say the same things. I wish he would at least seek some other place for his foolishness, for you cannot imagine how foolish it seems to hear a man make love to another woman. He wouldn't be my choice of a man anyhow if I had my life to live over again. It will be a happy day when I get my passport and can leave all these worries behind." Here was the question of passports again, and yet the newspaper man did not know what it meant. He began to blame himself for remissness in his duty, and to fear that he would find himself outside without having learned it. So he made up his mind that he would ask his host about it the first thing when he should find him again. The second woman took up the conversation and said: "Well, Mary, your lot is not so hard as mine. You had no little children to leave. When I died I went to my old home and hovered over my little children, knowing that they needed a mother's care, and there sat another woman beside the cradle, and it was she who answered when my baby cried. It was the first time the baby spoke and she called that woman mother." At this moment the girl with the curl, as the reporter called her, began to complain again, but this time it was about the grave of Charlotte Temple. "Really it wearies me to see what a ridiculous fuss all the lovelorn fools make about her grave. And, she got her passport long ago. Really I think that is paying a premium on weakness. One would think she was the only one to be disappointed in a man. Here come any number of silly things every day and nearly always bring something to put on her slab, which isn't much, anyhow. Not a word of epitaph, nothing but her name. "The only thing good about it is that someone hollowed out a place so that birds can drink out of it. After a rain there may be some water there, but it soon dries up, and others bring flower pots and bouquets for poor Floyd to sweep away. I noticed tonight that there was a scrubby little fish geranium in a dried up pot standing there and a most forlorn little kitten was trying to find a few drops of water." The young man instantly resolved that he would find that poor little kitten which, he felt sure, was the very one at which he had shied the stone. His mother would not object, so having set his conscience at rest, as so many of us do by promising to right a wrong-later on-he found himself again listening when one of the other women took up the conversation, and looking at the Egyptian, who still seemed to monopolize the gentlemen ghosts to a most scandalous extent and remarked: "I think a woman as black as that mummy ought not to be allowed here among us. As to princesses of her time, they were no better than they should be, and if history is correct, they went about in such a state as to scandalize anybody. They certainly couldn't have been pretty with those black faces. And I, for one, don't think they should be set up for miracles either." At this moment there passed a queer-looking woman ghost. Her back was bad and her legs were queer, like those of poor little Jenny Wren, and she had, in spite of her affliction, such a grand air of importance that she was remarkable among all the ghosts. As she passed the girl with the curl, she gave her head a toss as if she really intended an insult. As soon as she had passed out of hearing, the girl with the curl turned to the others and said: "Did you see Mrs. Simon Mullinstalk? I imagine you will know her the next time you do, for she is so proud of that name that she tries to project her personality everywhere. Did you ever hear how she came by that magnificent name?" "No," they all said in a chorus, "who is she, anyway?" "Why she was an old maid, and her name was Susannah Skinks. She was the only daughter of old Solon Skinks. He had a snug little fortune, but was such a miser that they never had enough to eat. I have heard my mother say that it was working beyond her strength while she was small that she became as you see her. When her father died-her mother had died long before-he gave her all he had, on the promise that while she lived she would never marry anyone. She kept her promise, but when she lay upon her deathbed-she was then forty-eight years old-she for some reason felt that she did not wish to have her name and age go down to posterity on her tombstone as an old maid. She unbosomed her feelings to her pastor. He knew she had money and might remember the missionary work in which he was interested, and advised her, saying that she was practically dead now, and there could be no harm in making a deathbed marriage. "They sent for the man whose name appealed to her. He was a hopeless paralytic, and had to be brought to her. They were left alone while she unfolded her plan to him. She wanted to be able to have 'Mrs.' on her tombstone, and if he consented to marry her now, she would will him everything she possessed. This just suited him, for the co |