o do Mrs. Dennison good, for presently she pushed
Mrs. Bird away and sat up. She had been laying down on my bed.

"'I'm all over it now,' says she, but she was terribly white, and her
eyes looked as if they saw something outside things. Mrs. Bird wasn't
much better, but she always had a sort of settled sweet, good look that
nothing could disturb to any great extent. I knew I looked dreadful,
for I caught a glimpse of myself in the glass, and I would hardly have
known who it was.

"Mrs. Dennison, she slid off the bed and walked sort of tottery to a
chair. 'I was silly to give way so,' says she.

"'No, you wasn't silly, sister,' says Mrs. Bird. 'I don't know what
this means any more than you do, but whatever it is, no one ought to be
called silly for being overcome by anything so different from other
things which we have known all our lives.'

"Mrs. Dennison looked at her sister, then she looked at me, then back
at her sister again, and Mrs. Bird spoke as if she had been asked a
question.

"'Yes,' says she, 'I do think Miss Arms ought to be told--that is, I
think she ought to be told all we know ourselves.'

"'That isn't much,' said Mrs. Dennison with a dying-away sort of sigh.
She looked as if she might faint away again any minute. She was a real
delicate-looking woman, but it turned out she was a good deal stronger
than poor Mrs. Bird.

"'No, there isn't much we do know,' says Mrs. Bird, 'but what little
there is she ought to know. I felt as if she ought to when she first
came here.'

"'Well, I didn't feel quite right about it,' said Mrs. Dennison, 'but I
kept hoping it might stop, and any way, that it might never trouble
her, and you had put so much in the house, and we needed the money, and
I didn't know but she might be nervous and think she couldn't come, and
I didn't want to take a man boarder.'

"'And aside from the money, we were very anxious to have you come, my
dear,' says Mrs. Bird.

"'Yes,' says Mrs. Dennison, 'we wanted the young company in the house;
we were lonesome, and we both of us took a great liking to you the
minute we set eyes on you.'

"And I guess they meant what they said, both of them. They were
beautiful women, and nobody could be any kinder to me than they were,
and I never blamed them for not telling me before, and, as they said,
there wasn't really much to tell.

"They hadn't any sooner fairly bought the house, and moved into it,
than they began to see and hear things