“Why, really, I don’t know,” answered the husband; “you must suit yourselves with regard to that.”

“Yes; but I’d rather you’d select, and then no one can blame me,” was the answer.

“Choose any room you please, except the one which Mag and Carrie now occupy, and rest assured you shall not be blamed,” said Mr. Hamilton.

The night before Lenora had appropriated to herself the best chamber, but the room was so large and so far distant from any one, and the windows and fireboard rattled so, that she felt afraid, and did not care to repeat her experiment.

“I ’clar for’t!” said Polly, when she heard of it.  “Gone right into the best bed, where even Miss Margaret never goes!  What are we all comin’ to?  Tell her, Luce, the story of the ghosts, and I’ll be bound she’ll make herself scarce in them rooms!”

“Tell her yourself,” said Lucy; and when, after breakfast, Lenora, anxious to spy out everything, appeared in the kitchen, Aunt Polly called out, “Did you hear anything last night, Miss Lenora?”

“Why, yes—­I heard the windows rattle,” was the answer; and Aunt Polly, with an ominous shake of the head, continued: 

“There’s more than windows rattle, I guess.  Didn’t you see nothin’, all white and corpse-like, go a-whizzin, and rappin’ by your bed?”

“Why, no,” said Lenora; “what do you mean?”

So Polly told her of the ghosts and goblins which nightly ranged the two chambers over the front and back parlors.  Lenora said nothing, but she secretly resolved not to venture again after dark into the haunted portion of the house.  But where should she sleep?  That was now the important question.  Adjoining the sitting-room was a pleasant, cozy little place, which Margaret called her music-room.  In it she kept her piano, her music stand, books, and several fine plants, besides numerous other little conveniences.  At the end of this room was a large closet where, at different seasons of the year, Mag hung away the articles of clothing which she and her sister did not need.

Toward this place Lenora turned her eyes; for, besides being unusually pleasant, it was also very near her mother, whose sleeping-room joined, though it did not communicate with it.  Accordingly, before noon the piano was removed to the parlor; the plants were placed, some on the piazza, and some in the sitting-room window, while Margaret and Carrie’s dresses were removed to the closet of their room, which chanced to be a trifle too small to hold them all conveniently; so they were crowded one above the other, and left for “the girls to see to when they came home!”

In perfect horror Aunt Polly looked on, regretting for once the ghost story which she had told.

“Why don’t you take the chamber jinin’ the young ladies? that ain’t haunted,” said she, when they sent for her to help move the piano.  “Miss Margaret won’t thank you for scattern’ her things.”