he threw the reins
over the brown horse's neck, and walking to the edge of the empty
cellar-place, sat down on one of the granite blocks.

"But I want you to understand that I warn't born rollin'!" he continued
with some severity. "If you think that, hossy, you show your ignorance.
I was a stiddy boy, and a good boy, as boys go. Mother never made no
complaint, fur as I know. Poor mother! if I'm glad of anything in this
mortal world, it's that mother went before the house did. That old
lobster was right, darn his hide! a woman has to have a home. Poor
mother! She thought a sight of her home and her gardin. I can't but
scarcely feel she must be round somewheres, now; pickin' gooseberries,
most likely. Sho! gooseberries in October! well, butternuts, then! The
old butternut tree warn't burned. Hossy, I tell you, it seems as though
if I was to turn round this minute I should expect to see mother's white
apurn--"

He turned as he spoke, and stopped short. Something white glinted behind
the withered bushes of the garden plot.

Calvin Parks sat motionless for a moment, gazing with wide eyes. A cold
finger traced his spine, and his heart thumped loud in his ears. The
something white seemed to move--a swaying motion; and now a soft voice
began to croon, half speaking, half singing.

"I'd--I'd like to know what you are scairt of!" said Calvin Parks,
addressing himself. "You might put a name to it. It would be just like
mother, wouldn't it, to come back if it was anyways convenient, and see
to them butternuts? Well, then! You wouldn't be scairt of mother, would
you? I've no patience with you. The dumb critter there has more spunk
than what you have."

The brown horse had raised his head, and his ears were pointed toward
the something white that glinted through the bushes.

Another instant, and Calvin rose, and casting a scared look at the brown
horse, made his way with faltering steps round the cellar-hole and put
aside the bushes.

A small girl in a white pinafore cowered like a rabbit under a
straggling rose-bush, and looked up at him with wide eyes of terror.
Calvin's eyes, which had been no less wide, softened into a friendly
twinkle.

"How de do?" he said. "Pleased to meet you!"

The child drew a long, sobbing breath. "I thought you was ghosts!" she
said.

"So I thought you was!" said Calvin. "But we ain't, neither one on us;
nor yet hossy ain't. See hossy there? you never heard of a ghost hossy,
did you now?"