, my Boy, and God bless you!"

"I hope it isn't Haunted"

CHAPTER I.

MAKING FRIENDS.

"Good onset bodes good end."
SPENSER.

"Well?" said Ralph.

"Well?" said Sylvia.

"Well?" said Molly.

Then they all three stood and looked at each other. Each had his or her
own opinion on the subject which was uppermost in their minds, but each
was equally reluctant to express it, till that of the others had been got
at. So each of the three said "Well?" to the other two, and stood
waiting, as if they were playing the old game of "Who speaks first?" It
got tiresome, however, after a bit, and Molly, whose patience was the
most quickly exhausted, at last threw caution and dignity to the winds.

"Well," she began, but the "well" this time had quite a different tone
from the last; "_well_," she repeated emphatically, "I'm the youngest,
and I suppose you'll say I shouldn't give my opinion first, but I just
will, for all that. And my opinion is, that she's just as nice as she can
be."

"And I think so too," said Sylvia, "Don't you, Ralph?"

"I?" said Ralph loftily, "you forget. _I_ have seen her before."

"Yes, but not to _remember_," said Sylvia and Molly at once. "You might
just as well never have seen her before as far as that goes. But isn't
she nice?"

"Ye-es," said Ralph. "I don't think she's bad for a grandmother."

"'For a grandmother!'" cried Molly indignantly. "What do you mean, Ralph?
What can be nicer than a nice grandmother?"

"But suppose she wasn't nice? she needn't be, you know. There are
grandmothers and grandmothers," persisted Ralph.

"Of course I know _that_," said Molly. "You don't suppose I thought our
grandmother was everybody's grandmother, you silly boy. What I say is
she's just like a real grandmother--not like Nora Leslie's, who is always
scolding Nora's mother for spoiling her children, and wears such grand,
quite _young lady_ dresses, and has _black_ hair," with an accent of
profound disgust, "not nice, beautiful, soft, silver hair, like _our_
grandmother's. Now, isn't it true, Sylvia, isn't our grandmother just
like a _real_ one?"

Sylvia smiled. "Yes, exactly," she replied. "She would almost do for a
fairy godmother, if only she had a stick with a gold knob."

"Only perhaps she'd beat us with it," said Ralph.

"Oh no, not _beat_ us," cried Molly, dancing about. "It would be worse
than that. If we were naughty she'd point it at us, and then we'd all
three turn into