The Mary E. Wilkins Freeman Megapack. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

The closet door was shut. Sophia threw it open, then she looked at Miss Stark. On the pegs hung the schoolteacher’s own garments in ordinary array.

      “I can’t see that there is anything wrong,” remarked Sophia grimly.

      Miss Stark strove to speak but she could not. She sank down on the nearest chair. She did not even attempt to defend herself. She saw her own clothes in the closet. She knew there had been no time for any human being to remove those which she thought she had seen and put hers in their places. She knew it was impossible. Again the awful horror of herself overwhelmed her.

      “You must have been mistaken,” she heard Sophia say.

      She muttered something, she scarcely knew what. Sophia then went out of the room. Presently she undressed and went to bed. In the morning she did not go down to breakfast, and when Sophia came to inquire, requested that the stage be ordered for the noon train. She said that she was sorry, but was ill, and feared lest she might be worse, and she felt that she must return home at once. She looked ill, and could not take even the toast and tea which Sophia had prepared for her. Sophia felt a certain pity for her, but it was largely mixed with indignation. She felt that she knew the true reason for the school-teacher’s illness and sudden departure, and it incensed her.

      “If folks are going to act like fools we shall never be able to keep this house,” she said to Amanda after Miss Stark had gone; and Amanda knew what she meant.

      Directly the widow, Mrs. Elvira Simmons, knew that the school-teacher had gone and the southwest room was vacant, she begged to have it in exchange for her own. Sophia hesitated a moment; she eyed the widow sharply. There was something about the large, roseate face worn in firm lines of humour and decision which reassured her.

      “I have no objection, Mrs. Simmons,” said she, “if—”

      “If what?” asked the widow.

      “If you have common sense enough not to keep fussing because the room happens to be the one my aunt died in,” said Sophia bluntly.

      “Fiddlesticks!” said the widow, Mrs. Elvira Simmons.

      That very afternoon she moved into the southwest chamber. The young girl Flora assisted her, though much against her will.

      “Now I want you to carry Mrs. Simmons’ dresses into the closet in that room and hang them up nicely, and see that she has everything she wants,” said Sophia Gill. “And you can change the bed and put on fresh sheets. What are you looking at me that way for?”

      “Oh, Aunt Sophia, can’t I do something else?”

      “What do you want to do something else for?”

      “I am afraid.”

      “Afraid of what? I should think you’d hang your head. No; you go right in there and do what I tell you.”

      Pretty soon Flora came running into the sitting-room where Sophia was, as pale as death, and in her hand she held a queer, old-fashioned frilled nightcap.

      “What’s that?” demanded Sophia.

      “I found it under the pillow.”

      “What pillow?”

      “In the southwest room.”

      Sophia took it and looked at it sternly.

      “It’s Great-aunt Harriet’s,” said Flora faintly.

      “You run down street and do that errand at the grocer’s for me and I’ll see that room,” said Sophia with dignity. She carried the nightcap away and put it in the trunk in the garret where she had supposed it stored with the rest of the dead woman’s belongings. Then she went into the southwest chamber and made the bed and assisted Mrs. Simmons to move, and there was no further incident.

      The widow was openly triumphant over her new room. She talked a deal about it at the dinner-table.

      “It is the best room in the house, and I expect you all to be envious of me,” said she.

      “And you are sure you don’t feel afraid of ghosts?” said the librarian.

      “Ghosts!” repeated the widow with scorn. “If a ghost comes I’ll send her over to you. You are just across the hall from the southwest room.”

      “You needn’t,” returned Eliza Lippincott with a shudder. “I wouldn’t sleep in that room, after—” she checked herself with an eye on the minister.

      “After what?” asked the widow.

      “Nothing,” replied Eliza Lippincott in an embarrassed fashion.

      “I trust Miss Lippincott has too good sense and too great faith to believe in anything of that sort,” said the minister.

      “I trust so, too,” replied Eliza hurriedly.

      “You did see or hear something—now what was it, I want to know?” said the widow that evening when they were alone in the parlour. The minister had gone to make a call.

      Eliza hesitated.

      “What was it?” insisted the widow.

      “Well,” said Eliza hesitatingly, “if you’ll promise not to tell.”

      “Yes, I promise; what was it?”

      “Well, one day last week, just before the school-teacher came, I went in that room to see if there were any clouds. I wanted to wear my gray dress, and I was afraid it was going to rain, so I wanted to look at the sky at all points, so I went in there, and—”

      “And what?”

      “Well, you know that chintz over the bed, and the valance, and the easy chair; what pattern should you say it was?”

      “Why, peacocks on a blue ground. Good land, I shouldn’t think any one who had ever seen that would forget it.”

      “Peacocks on a blue ground, you are sure?”

      “Of course I am. Why?”

      “Only when I went in there that afternoon it was not peacocks on a blue ground; it was great red roses on a yellow ground.”

      “Why, what do you mean?”

      “What I say.”

      “Did Miss Sophia have it changed?”

      “No. I went in there again an hour later and the peacocks were there.”

      “You didn’t see straight the first time.”

      “I expected you would say that.”

      “The peacocks are there now; I saw them just now.”

      “Yes, I suppose so; I suppose they flew back.”

      “But they couldn’t.”

      “Looks as if they did.”

      “Why, how could such a thing be? It couldn’t be.”

      “Well, all I know is those peacocks were gone for an hour that afternoon and the red roses on the yellow ground were there instead.”

      The widow stared at her a moment, then she began to laugh rather hysterically.

      “Well,” said she, “I guess I sha’n’t give up my nice room for any such tomfoolery as that. I guess I would just as soon have red roses on a yellow ground as peacocks on a blue; but there’s no use talking, you couldn’t have seen straight. How could such a thing have happened?”

      “I don’t know,” said Eliza Lippincott; “but I know I wouldn’t sleep in that room if you’d give me a thousand dollars.”

      “Well, I would,” said the widow, “and I’m going to.”

      When Mrs. Simmons went to the southwest chamber that night she cast a glance at the bed-hanging and the easy chair. There were the peacocks on the blue ground. She gave a contemptuous