Emily’s answer being in the affirmative, their hostess continued: 

“I’m so sorry to be obliged to set nothin’ but cold ham and toast and tea before you,” she said.  “If I had known you was comin’ I should have prepared somethin’ more fittin’.  After such an experience as you must have been through this night to set down to ham and toast!  I—­I declare I feel real debilitated and ashamed to offer ’em to you.”

Thankful answered.

“Don’t say a word, Miss Parker,” she said, heartily.  “We’re the ones that ought to be ashamed.  Landin’ on you this way in the middle of the night.  You’re awfully good to take us in at all.  My cousin and I were on our way to the hotel, but Cap’n Bangs wouldn’t hear of it.  He’s responsible for our comin’ here.”

Miss Parker nodded.

“Cap’n Obed is the most hospital soul livin’,” she said, grandly.  “He done just right.  If he’d done anything else Kenelm and I would have felt hurt.  I—­Look out!” with a sudden snatch at her brother’s shirt front.  “There goes that tie.  Another second and ’twould have been right in your plate.”

Kenelm snapped the loop of the “made” tie over his collar button.  “Don’t grab at me that way, Hannah,” he protested mildly.  “I’m kind of nervous tonight, after what I’ve been through.  ’Twouldn’t have done no great harm if I had dropped it.  I could pick it up again, couldn’t I?”

“You could, but I doubt if you would.  You might have ate it, you’re so absent-minded.  Nervous!  You nervous!  What do you think of me?  Mrs. Barnes,” turning to Thankful and once more resuming the “company” manner, “you’ll excuse our bein’ a little upset.  You see, when my brother came home and said he’d seen lights movin’ around in the old Barnes’ house, he frightened us all pretty near to death.  All Cap’n Obed could think of was tramps, or thieves or somethin’.  Nothin’ would do but he must drag Kenelm right back to see who or what was in there.  And I was left alone to imagine all sorts of dreadful things.  Tramps I might stand.  They belong to this world, anyhow.  But in that house, at eleven o’clock at night, I—­Mrs. Barnes, do you believe in aberrations?”

Thankful was nonplused.  “In—­in which?” she asked.

“In aberrations, spirits of dead folks comin’ alive again?”

For just a moment Mrs. Barnes hesitated.  Then she glanced at Emily, who was trying hard not to smile, and answered, with decision:  “No, I don’t.”

“Well, I don’t either, so far as that goes.  I never see one myself, and I’ve never seen anybody that has.  But when Kenelm came tearin’ in to say he’d seen a light in a house shut up as long as that one has been, and a house that folks—­”

Captain Bangs interrupted.  He had been regarding Thankful closely and now he changed the subject.

“How did it happen you saw that light, Kenelm?” he asked.  “What was you doin’ over in that direction a night like this?”