h along the shelves. "But
Mrs. Westangle's library doesn't seem to be very rich in narrative."

He had not his mind on the search perhaps, and perhaps she knew it. She
presently said, "I wish I dared ask you a favor--I mean your advice, Mr.
Verrian."

He lifted himself from his stooping posture and looked at her, smiling.
"Would that take much courage?" His smile was a little mocking; he
was thinking that a girl who would hurry that note to him, and would
personally see that it did not fail to reach him, would have the courage
for much more.

She did not reply directly. "I should have to explain, but I know you
won't tell. This is going to be my piece de resistance, my grand stunt.
I'm going to bring it off the last night." She stopped long enough for
Verrian to revise his resolution of going away with the fellows who were
leaving the middle of the week, and to decide on staying to the end. "I
am going to call it Seeing Ghosts."

"That's good," Verrian said, provisionally.

"Yes, I might say I was surprised at my thinking it up."

"That would be one form of modesty."

"Yes," she said, with a wan smile she had, "and then again it mightn't
be another." She went on, abruptly, "As many as like can take part
in the performance. It's to be given out, and distinctly understood
beforehand, that the ghost isn't a veridical phantom, but just an
honest, made-up, every-day spook. It may change its pose from time to
time, or its drapery, but the setting is to be always the same, and the
people who take their turns in seeing it are to be explicitly reassured,
one after another, that there's nothing in it, you know. The fun will be
in seeing how each one takes it, after they know what it really is."

"Then you're going to give us a study of temperaments."

"Yes," she assented. And after a moment, given to letting the notion get
quite home with her, she asked, vividly, "Would you let me use it?"

"The phrase? Why, certainly. But wouldn't it be rather too
psychological? I think just Seeing Ghosts would be better."

"Better than Seeing Ghosts: A Study of Temperaments? Perhaps it would.
It would be simpler."

"And in this house you need all the simplicity you can get," he
suggested.

She smiled, intelligently but reticently. "My idea is that every one
somehow really believes in ghosts--I know I do--and so fully expects to
see one that any sort of make-up will affect them for the moment just as
if they did see one. I though