Hildegarde nodded in delight.  “Yes!” she said.  “That is just the way I felt when I first saw the place.  It was some time before I could feel it right to come here without apologizing to the ghosts.”

“Your ancestors’ ghosts?” said Bell Merryweather, inquiringly.  “Aren’t they your own ghosts?  Haven’t you lived here always?”

Hildegarde explained that the place had belonged to a cousin of her mother’s, who left it to her at his death.

“Oh!” said Miss Merryweather; then she considered a little, with her head on one side.  Hildegarde decided that, though not a beauty, the new-comer had one of the pleasantest faces she had ever seen.

“On the whole,” the girl went on, “I am rather glad that my theory was wrong.  The truth is less romantic, but it makes you much more real and accessible, which is, after all, desirable in a country neighbourhood.”

“Do tell me what you mean!” cried Hildegarde.

Miss Merryweather laughed.

“If you are quite sure you won’t mind?” she said, tentatively.  “Well, your place is so beautiful,—­even apart from this—­this—­ bower of nymphs,—­it is so shadowed with great trees, and so green with old turf, that when I saw you this morning walking under the tree, I made up a romance about you,—­a pretty little romance.  You are quite sure you don’t mind?  You were the last of an ancient family, and you were very delicate, and your mother kept you in this lovely solitude, hoping to preserve your precious life.  And now,” she burst into a clear peal of laughter, in which Hildegarde joined heartily, “now I see you near, and you are no more delicate than I am, and you are not the last of an ancient family.  At least, I hope you are not,” she cried, growing suddenly grave.

“Oh! do you like to make romances?” cried Hildegarde, with ready tact waiving the last question.  “It is my delight, too.  No, I am not in the least delicate, as you say, and we have only been here two years, my mother and I; yet it seems like home, and I hope we shall always live here now.  And are you beginning to feel at all settled in,—­I don’t know any name for your house; we have called it just the ‘Yellow House’ as it had no special interest, being uninhabited.  But I suppose you will give it a name?”

“If we can decide on one!” said Bell Merryweather, laughing.  “The trouble is, there are so many of us to decide.  I want to call it Gamboge:  brief, you see, and simple.  But one boy says it must be Chrome Castle, and another votes for Topaz Tower; so I don’t know how it will end.”

“When I was a little girl,” said Hildegarde, “I had a book, the dearest little book, called ‘Pumpkin House.’  It was about—­”

“Oh, did you have ‘Pumpkin House?’” cried Bell Merryweather, eagerly.  “Oh! wasn’t it a darling?  And didn’t you think you never could be perfectly happy till you could live in a pumpkin?  And to think of my forgetting it now, just when the opportunity has come!  Of course we shall call the new home Pumpkin House!”