n and bred, should be that superstitious! You mustn't
believe such rubbish!"

I scented entertainment, for Penny dogmatizing on spiritualism was likely
to prove interesting.

"What's up, Penny?" I inquired with an air of innocence, as she suddenly
emerged from the kitchen, wrathfully brandishing a huge knife--as who
should say, in Hamlet's words:

"I'll make a ghost of him that lets me!"

had she not been bent upon the more peaceful, if prosaic, slaughter of a
lettuce for the luncheon salad.

Penny was just in the mood to give vent to her theological opinions
concerning the possibility of visits from another world, and at once
seized the opportunity of imparting a little wholesome instruction to any
audience obtainable.

"The nonsense that folks get into their 'eads nowadays, Mr. Edmund--what
with these trashy novels and 'apenny papers--is something past belief!
Not but what Elsie is a good, quiet girl enough, and reg'lar at her
duties every first Sunday in the month; but she's young, and I suppose we
'ave to make allowance for young folk."

I murmured in token of acquiescence.

"I let her off for the afternoon yesterday, to take tea with her _h_aunt
from America, and back she comes with a cock-and-bull story of a
_h_apparition her youngest brother Aleck imagined he saw the night before
last."

"An apparition!" I cried. "That's strange! Where did the boy see it?"

"He couldn't have seen it, Mr. Edmund, as you must know very well, with
your _h_education and experience. He was running home in the moonlight
and thought he saw some figure in the old mill, which, of course, he says
must have been a ghost."

"A ghost at the old mill!" I laughed heartily myself at the notion. "It
couldn't have been poor old Archie. It's not like him to terrify his
neighbors in that way."

"I gave the girl a good talking to," continued Penny. (I did not doubt
it!) "'Read your Penny Catechism,' I said, 'and see how strong it is
against dealing with the Devil by consulting spiritualists, and don't let
me hear another word about it.'"

It seemed rather hard on poor Elsie, who was, beyond doubt, innocent of
any such forbidden practices. But I refrained from comment, for I wanted
to hear more about the _h_apparition.

But Penny could not be drawn out. She professed herself so disgusted at
Elsie's "superstition" that I could get no coherent account of what Aleck
was supposed to have seen. So I left her to vent her wrath