een boughs, and be pushed about, and the people are to skate up
for the tea. There are to be tea and chocolate, and two girls to pour,
just as in real life. It isn't a very dazzling idea, but I thought it
might do; and Mrs. Westangle is so good-natured. Now, if the thermometer
will do its part!"

"I am sure it will," Verrian said, but a glance at the gray sky did not
confirm him in his prophetic venture. The snow was sodden under foot; a
breath from the south stirred the pines to an Aeolian response and moved
the stiff, dry leaves of the scrub-oaks. A sapsucker was marking an
accurate circle of dots round the throat of a tall young maple,
and enjoying his work in a low, guttural soliloquy, seemingly, yet,
dismayingly, suggestive of spring.

"It's lovely, anyway," she said, following his glance with an upward
turn of her face.

"Yes, it's beautiful. I think this sort of winter day is about the best
the whole year can do. But I will sacrifice the chance of another like
it to your skating-tea, Miss Shirley."

He did not know why he should have made this speech to her, but
apparently she did, and she said, "You're always coming to my help, Mr.
Verrian."

"Don't mention it!"

"I won't, then," she said, with a smile that showed her thin face at its
thinnest and left her lip caught on her teeth till she brought it down
voluntarily. It was a small but full lip and pretty, and this trick of
it had a fascination. She added, gravely, "I don't believe you will like
my ice-tea."

"I haven't any active hostility to it. You can't always be striking
twelve--twelve midnight--as you will be in Seeing Ghosts. But your
ice-tea will do very well for striking five. I'm rather elaborate!"

"Not too elaborate to hide your real opinion. I wonder what you do think
of my own elaboration--I mean of my scheme."

"Yes?"

They had moved on, at his turning to walk with her, so as not to keep
her standing in the snow, and now she said, looking over her shoulder at
him, "I've decided that it won't do to let the ghost have all the glory.
I don't think it will be fair to let the people merely be scared, even
when they've been warned that they're to see a ghost and told it isn't
real."

She seemed to refer the point to him, and he said, provisionally, "I
don't know what more they can ask."

"They can ask questions. I'm going to let each person speak to the
ghost, if not scared dumb, and ask it just what they please; and I'm
going to answer