“Now do tell me exactly what happened?” Miss Farrow spoke with a mixture of coaxing and kindly authority.  “What do you think you saw?  I need hardly tell you that I don’t believe in ghosts.”  As the maid well knew, the speaker might have finished the sentence with “or in anything else.”  But that fact, Pegler being the manner of woman she was, did not detract from the affection and esteem in which she held her lady.  You can’t have everything—­such was her simple philosophy—­and religious people do not always act up to their profession.  Miss Farrow, at any rate in her dealings with Pegler, was always better than her word.  She was a kind, a considerate, and an intelligent mistress.

So it was that, reluctantly, Pegler made up her mind to speak.  “I’d like to say, ma’am,” she began, “that no one said nothing to me about that room being haunted.  You was the first that mentioned it to me, after I’d spoken to you yesterday.  As you know, ma’am, the servants here are a job lot; they don’t know nothing about the house.  ’Twasn’t till to-day that one of the village people, the woman at the general shop and post office, let on that Wyndfell Hall was well known to be a ghosty place.”

There was a pause, and then Pegler added:  “Still, as you and I well know, ma’am, tales don’t lose nothing in the telling.”

“Indeed they don’t!  Never mind what the people in the village say.  This kind of strange, lonely, beautiful old house is sure to be said to be haunted.  What I want to know is what you think you saw, Pegler—­” The speaker looked sharply into the woman’s face.

“I don’t like to see you standing, ma’am,” said Pegler inconsequently.  “If you’ll sit down in your chair again I’ll tell you what happened to me.”

Miss Farrow sank gracefully down into her deep, comfortable chair.  Again she put out her feet to the fire, for it was very cold on this 23rd of December, and she knew she had a tiring, probably a boring, evening before her.  Some strangers of whom she knew nothing, and cared less, excepting that they were the friends of her friend and host, Lionel Varick, were to arrive at Wyndfell Hall in time for dinner.  It was now six o’clock.

“Well,” she said patiently, “begin at the beginning, Pegler.  I wish you’d sit down too—­somehow it worries me to see you standing there.  You’ll be tempted to cut your story short.”

Pegler smiled a thin little smile.  In the last twelve years Miss Farrow had several times invited her to sit down, but of course she had always refused, being one that knew her place.  She had only sat in Miss Farrow’s presence during the days and nights when she had nursed her mistress through a serious illness—­then, of course, everything had been different, and she had had to sit down sometimes.

“The day before yesterday—­that is the evening Miss Bubbles arrived, ma’am—­after I’d dressed you and you’d gone downstairs, and I’d unpacked for Miss Bubbles, I went into my room and thought how pleasant it looked.  The curtains was drawn, and there was a nice fire, as you know, ma’am, which Mr. Varick so kindly ordered for me, and which I’ve had the whole week.  Also, I will say for Annie that even if she is a temporary, she is a good housemaid, making the girls under her do their work properly.”