“A flirtatious ghost?” queried Miss Cornelia skeptically.  She snorted.  “Humph!  Why didn’t you yell?”

“I was too scared to yell!  And I’m not the only one.”  She started to back away from the alcove, her eyes still fixed upon its haunted stairs.  “Why do you think the servants left so sudden this morning?” she went on.  “Do you really believe the housemaid had appendicitis?  Or the cook’s sister had twins?”

She turned and gestured at her mistress with a long, pointed forefinger.  Her voice had a note of doom.

“I bet a cent the cook never had any sister—­and the sister never had any twins,” she said impressively.  “No, Miss Neily, they couldn’t put it over on me like that!  They were scared away.  They saw—­It!”

She concluded her epic and stood nodding her head, an Irish Cassandra who had prophesied the evil to come.

“Fiddlesticks!” said Miss Cornelia briskly, more shaken by the recital than she would have admitted.  She tried to think of another topic of conversation.

“What time is it?” she asked.

Lizzie glanced at the mantel clock.  “Half-past ten, Miss Neily.”

Miss Cornelia yawned, a little dismally.  She felt as if the last two hours had not been hours but years.

“Miss Dale won’t be home for half an hour,” she said reflectively.  And if I have to spend another thirty minutes listening to Lizzie shiver, she thought, Dale will find me a nervous wreck when she does come home.  She rolled up her knitting and put it back in her knitting-bag; it was no use going on, doing work that would have to be ripped out again and yet she must do something to occupy her thoughts.  She raised her head and discovered Lizzie returning toward the alcove stairs with the stealthy tread of a panther.  The sight exasperated her.

“Now, Lizzie Allen!” she said sharply, “you forget all that superstitious nonsense and stop looking for ghosts!  There’s nothing in that sort of thing.”  She smiled—­she would punish Lizzie for her obdurate timorousness.  “Where’s that ouija-board?” she questioned, rising, with determination in her eye.

Lizzie shuddered violently.  “It’s up there—­with a prayer book on it to keep it quiet!” she groaned, jerking her thumb in the direction of the farther bookcase.

“Bring it here!” said Miss Cornelia implacably; then as Lizzie still hesitated, “Lizzie!”

Shivering, every movement of her body a conscious protest, Lizzie slowly went over to the bookcase, lifted off the prayer book, and took down the ouija-board.  Even then she would not carry it normally but bore it over to Miss Cornelia at arms’-length, as if any closer contact would blast her with lightning, her face a comic mask of loathing and repulsion.

She placed the lettered board in Miss Cornelia’s lap with a sigh of relief.  “You can do it yourself!  I’ll have none of it!” she said firmly.