The Ghost Story Megapack. Джером К. Джером

had the cooingest kind of voice), and I ran and got her a glass of cold water. I tell you it took considerable courage to go downstairs alone, but they had set a lamp on the entry table so I could see. I don’t believe I could have spunked up enough to have gone downstairs in the dark, thinking every second that child might be close to me. The lamp and the smell of the biscuits baking seemed to sort of keep my courage up, but I tell you I didn’t waste much time going down those stairs and out into the kitchen for a glass of water. I pumped as if the house was afire, and I grabbed the first thing I came across in the shape of a tumbler: it was a painted one that Mrs. Dennison’s Sunday school class gave her, and it was meant for a flower vase.

      “Well, I filled it and then ran upstairs. I felt every minute as if something would catch my feet, and I held the glass to Mrs. Dennison’s lips, while Mrs. Bird held her head up, and she took a good long swallow, then she looked hard at the tumbler.

      “‘Yes,’ says I, ‘I know I got this one, but I took the first I came across, and it isn’t hurt a mite.’

      “‘Don’t get the painted flowers wet,’ says Mrs. Dennison very feebly, ‘they’ll wash off if you do.’

      “‘I’ll be real careful,’ says I. I knew she set a sight by that painted tumbler.

      “The water seemed to do Mrs. Dennison good, for presently she pushed Mrs. Bird away and sat up. She had been laying down on my bed.

      “‘I’m all over it now,’ says she, but she was terribly white, and her eyes looked as if they saw something outside things. Mrs. Bird wasn’t much better, but she always had a sort of settled sweet, good look that nothing could disturb to any great extent. I knew I looked dreadful, for I caught a glimpse of myself in the glass, and I would hardly have known who it was.

      “Mrs. Dennison, she slid off the bed and walked sort of tottery to a chair. ‘I was silly to give way so,’ says she.

      “‘No, you wasn’t silly, sister,’ says Mrs. Bird. ‘I don’t know what this means any more than you do, but whatever it is, no one ought to be called silly for being overcome by anything so different from other things which we have known all our lives.’

      “Mrs. Dennison looked at her sister, then she looked at me, then back at her sister again, and Mrs. Bird spoke as if she had been asked a question.

      “‘Yes,’ says she, ‘I do think Miss Arms ought to be told—that is, I think she ought to be told all we know ourselves.’

      “‘That isn’t much,’ said Mrs. Dennison with a dying-away sort of sigh. She looked as if she might faint away again any minute. She was a real delicate-looking woman, but it turned out she was a good deal stronger than poor Mrs. Bird.

      “‘No, there isn’t much we do know,’ says Mrs. Bird, ‘but what little there is she ought to know. I felt as if she ought to when she first came here.’

      “‘Well, I didn’t feel quite right about it,’ said Mrs. Dennison, ‘but I kept hoping it might stop, and any way, that it might never trouble her, and you had put so much in the house, and we needed the money, and I didn’t know but she might be nervous and think she couldn’t come, and I didn’t want to take a man boarder.’

      “‘And aside from the money, we were very anxious to have you come, my dear,’ says Mrs. Bird.

      “‘Yes,’ says Mrs. Dennison, ‘we wanted the young company in the house; we were lonesome, and we both of us took a great liking to you the minute we set eyes on you.’

      “And I guess they meant what they said, both of them. They were beautiful women, and nobody could be any kinder to me than they were, and I never blamed them for not telling me before, and, as they said, there wasn’t really much to tell.

      “They hadn’t any sooner fairly bought the house, and moved into it, than they began to see and hear things. Mrs. Bird said they were sitting together in the sitting-room one evening when they heard it the first time. She said her sister was knitting lace (Mrs. Dennison made beautiful knitted lace) and she was reading the Missionary Herald (Mrs. Bird was very much interested in mission work), when all of a sudden they heard something. She heard it first and she laid down her Missionary Herald and listened, and then Mrs. Dennison she saw her listening and she drops her lace. ‘What is it you are listening to, Abby?’ says she. Then it came again and they both heard, and the cold shivers went down their backs to hear it, though they didn’t know why. ‘It’s the cat, isn’t it?’ says Mrs. Bird.

      “‘It isn’t any cat,’ says Mrs. Dennison.

      “‘Oh, I guess it must be the cat; maybe she’s got a mouse,’ says Mrs. Bird, real cheerful, to calm down Mrs. Dennison, for she saw she was ’most scared to death, and she was always afraid of her fainting away. Then she opens the door and calls, ‘Kitty, kitty, kitty!’ They had brought their cat with them in a basket when they came to East Wilmington to live. It was a real handsome tiger cat, a tommy, and he knew a lot.

      “Well, she called ‘Kitty, kitty, kitty!’ and sure enough the kitty came, and when he came in the door he gave a big yawl that didn’t sound unlike what they had heard.

      “‘There, sister, here he is; you see it was the cat,’ says Mrs. Bird. ‘Poor kitty!’

      “But Mrs. Dennison she eyed the cat, and she give a great screech.

      “‘What’s that? What’s that?’ says she.

      “‘What’s what?’ says Mrs. Bird, pretending to herself that she didn’t see what her sister meant.

      “‘Somethin’s got hold of that cat’s tail,’ says Mrs. Dennison. ‘Somethin’s got hold of his tail. It’s pulled straight out, an’ he can’t get away. Just hear him yawl!’

      “‘It isn’t anything,’ says Mrs. Bird, but even as she said that she could see a little hand holding fast to that cat’s tail, and then the child seemed to sort of clear out of the dimness behind the hand, and the child was sort of laughing then, instead of looking sad, and she said that was a great deal worse. She said that laugh was the most awful and the saddest thing she ever heard.

      “Well, she was so dumfounded that she didn’t know what to do, and she couldn’t sense at first that it was anything supernatural. She thought it must be one of the neighbour’s children who had run away and was making free of their house, and was teasing their cat, and that they must be just nervous to feel so upset by it. So she speaks up sort of sharp.

      “‘Don’t you know that you mustn’t pull the kitty’s tail?’ says she. ‘Don’t you know you hurt the poor kitty, and she’ll scratch you if you don’t take care. Poor kitty, you mustn’t hurt her.’

      “And with that she said the child stopped pulling that cat’s tail and went to stroking her just as soft and pitiful, and the cat put his back up and rubbed and purred as if he liked it. The cat never seemed a mite afraid, and that seemed queer, for I had always heard that animals were dreadfully afraid of ghosts; but then, that was a pretty harmless little sort of ghost.

      “Well, Mrs. Bird said the child stroked that cat, while she and Mrs. Dennison stood watching it, and holding onto each other, for, no matter how hard they tried to think it was all right, it didn’t look right. Finally Mrs. Dennison she spoke.

      “‘What’s your name, little girl?’ says she.

      “Then the child looks up and stops stroking the cat, and says she can’t find her mother, just the way she said it to me. Then Mrs. Dennison she gave such a gasp that Mrs. Bird thought she was going to faint away, but she didn’t. ‘Well, who is your mother?’ says she. But the child just says again ‘I can’t find my mother—I can’t find my mother.’

      “‘Where do you live, dear?’ says Mrs. Bird.

      “‘I can’t find my mother,’ says the child.

      “Well, that was the way it was. Nothing happened. Those two women stood there hanging onto each other, and the child stood