“Yes, it is real pretty work.  I just Love to crochet.”

The two women rocked and sewed and crocheted in silence for two or three minutes.  They were both waiting.  Mrs. Meserve waited for the other’s curiosity to develop in order that her news might have, as it were, a befitting stage entrance.  Mrs. Emerson waited for the news.  Finally she could wait no longer.

“Well, what’s the news?” said she.

“Well, I don’t know as there’s anything very particular,” hedged the other woman, prolonging the situation.

“Yes, there is; you can’t cheat me,” replied Mrs. Emerson.

“Now, how do you know?”

“By the way you look.”

Mrs. Meserve laughed consciously and rather vainly.

“Well, Simon says my face is so expressive I can’t hide anything more than five minutes no matter how hard I try,” said she.  “Well, there is some news.  Simon came home with it this noon.  He heard it in South Dayton.  He had some business over there this morning.  The old Sargent place is let.”

Mrs. Emerson dropped her sewing and stared.

“You don’t say so!”

“Yes, it is.”

“Who to?”

“Why, some folks from Boston that moved to South Dayton last year.  They haven’t been satisfied with the house they had there—­it wasn’t large enough.  The man has got considerable property and can afford to live pretty well.  He’s got a wife and his unmarried sister in the family.  The sister’s got money, too.  He does business in Boston and it’s just as easy to get to Boston from here as from South Dayton, and so they’re coming here.  You know the old Sargent house is a splendid place.”

“Yes, it’s the handsomest house in town, but—­”

“Oh, Simon said they told him about that and he just laughed.  Said he wasn’t afraid and neither was his wife and sister.  Said he’d risk ghosts rather than little tucked-up sleeping-rooms without any sun, like they’ve had in the Dayton house.  Said he’d rather risk seeing ghosts, than risk being ghosts themselves.  Simon said they said he was a great hand to joke.”

“Oh, well,” said Mrs. Emerson, “it is a beautiful house, and maybe there isn’t anything in those stories.  It never seemed to me they came very straight anyway.  I never took much stock in them.  All I thought was—­if his wife was nervous.”

“Nothing in creation would hire me to go into a house that I’d ever heard a word against of that kind,” declared Mrs. Meserve with emphasis.  “I wouldn’t go into that house if they would give me the rent.  I’ve seen enough of haunted houses to last me as long as I live.”

Mrs. Emerson’s face acquired the expression of a hunting hound.

“Have you?” she asked in an intense whisper.

“Yes, I have.  I don’t want any more of it.”

“Before you came here?”

“Yes; before I was married—­when I was quite a girl.”