“And the darker the room grew, the more it seemed alive.”

In Grandmother’s room there were tall south windows reaching nearly to the ceiling. It must have been bright with sunshine in midday, but it was nearly evening now and the lower halves of the windows were closed with white shutters, which gave the room a very cosy appearance. In the white marble fireplace a cheerful fire was burning, and above it on the mantel was a large stuffed owl as white as the marble on which he was perched. He seemed quite alive and very wise, his great yellow eyes shining in the firelight. Hortense glanced at him now and then, and always his bright eyes seemed fixed upon her.

“I believe he could talk if he would,” thought Hortense. “Sometime when we’re alone, I’ll ask him if he can’t.”

“Now, if you’ll call your grandfather, we’ll have tea,” said Grandmother. “He’s in his library in the next room.”

Hortense ran to do as she was told. The library was walled with books, thousands of them, and near a window Grandfather sat at a big desk, busily writing. He looked up when Hortense entered, and laid down his pen to take her on his knee.

Grandfather had white hair, and bushy white eyebrows over piercing dark eyes. Hortense had always thought him very handsome, particularly when he walked, for he was tall and very straight. She thought he must look like a Sultan or Indian Rajah, such as is told of in the Arabian Nights, for his skin was dark, and when he told her stories of his youth and his wanderings about the earth, she wondered if he weren’t really some foreign prince merely pretending to be her grandfather. He had been in many strange places in India, Africa, and the South Seas, and when he chose, he could tell wonderful stories of his adventures.

While Grandfather held her on his lap, Hortense gazed at a strange bronze figure which stood on a stone pedestal beside his desk. It was a bronze image such as Hortense had seen pictured in books some sort of an idol, she thought. The figure sat cross-legged like a tailor and in one hand held what seemed to be a bronze water lily. Hortense had never seen an image or statue that seemed so calm, as though thinking deep thoughts which it would never trouble to express.

“What a funny little man,” said Hortense.

Grandfather looked gravely at the bronze figure.

“That is an image of Buddha, the Indian god,” he said. “Perhaps after dinner I’ll tell you a story about him.”

He lifted Hortense from his knee and, taking her by the hand, went into
Grandmother’s room.

Mary had brought in the tea wagon, which Hortense thought looked like a dwarf. Indeed, all the furniture seemed curiously alive, as though it could talk if it would. In the corner was a lowboy. With the firelight falling on its polished surface and on the bright brass handles to its drawers, it seemed to make a fat smiling face, as of a good-humored boy.

“What a jolly face,” Hortense thought. “He’d be good fun to play with, I’m sure.”

She ate her toast and cake while Grandfather and Grandmother talked together in the twilight. And the darker the room grew, the more it seemed alive.

“I believe all these things are talking,” said Hortense to herself. “Now, if I could only hear! Perhaps if I had an ear trumpet or something

As she was thinking thus, a great tortoise-shell cat walked calmly in, seated himself on the hearth-rug, and stared into the fire. It seemed to Hortense that the flredogs fairly leaped out at him, but the cat only gazed placidly at them.

“He knows they can’t get at him,” thought Hortense, “and he’s saying something to make them mad.”

Grandfather and Grandmother were talking in a low tone, and Hortense suddenly found herself listening to them with interest.

“Uncle Jonah says it’s a ‘ha’nt,’” Grandfather was saying with a smile. “He and Esmerelda are afraid and want me to fix up the rooms over the stable.”

“What nonsense!” Grandmother exclaimed sharply.

“But there is something odd about the house, you know,” said Grandfather.

“I believe that you think it’s a ghost yourself, Keith,” said Grandmother, looking keenly at him.

“I’ve always wanted to see a ghost,” admitted Grandfather, “but I’ve had no luck. Why shouldn’t there be ghosts? All simple peoples believe in them.”

“Remember Hortense,” Grandmother said in a low voice.

“To be sure,” Grandfather answered, looking quickly at Hortense.

Hortense heard with all her ears, but her eyes were upon the cat. The cat sat with a smile on his face and one ear cocked. Once he looked at Grandfather and laughed, noiselessly.

“The cat understands every word!” Hortense said to herself with conviction. She began to be a little afraid of the cat, for she felt that everything in the room disliked him. The lowboy no longer smiled but looked rather solemn and foolish. The chairs stood stiffly, as though offended at his presence. The white owl glared fiercely with his yellow eyes, and the firedogs fairly snapped their teeth.

But the cat did not mind. He lay on the hearthrug and grinned at them all. Then he rolled over on his back, waved his paws in the air, and whipped his long tail.

“He’s laughing at them!” said Hortense to herself. “And he knows all about the ‘ha’nt,’ whatever that is!”

Mary came to remove the tea wagon, which Hortense decided was really good at heart but surly and tart of temper because of his deformity. The brass teakettle looked to be good-tempered but unreliable.

“There’s something catlike about a teakettle,” Hortense reflected. “It likes to sit in a warm place and purr. And it likes any one who will give it what it wants. Its love is cupboard love.”

“Dinner isn’t until seven,” said Grandmother, “so perhaps you’d like to go to the kitchen and see Esmerelda, the cook, Uncle Jonah’s wife. If you are nice to her, it will mean cookies and all sorts of good things.”

Hortense thought, “If I’m nice to Esmerelda just to get cookies, I’ll be no better than the cat and the teakettle; so I hope I can like her for herself.” Nevertheless, it would be nice to have cookies, too.

“Isn’t this an awfully big house?” said Hortense to Mary as they went down a long dark passage.

“Much too big,” said Mary. “I spend my days cleaning rooms that are never used. There’s the whole third floor of bedrooms, not one of which has been slept in for years. Then there are the parlors, and many closets full of things that have to be aired, and sunned, and kept from moths.”

“May I go with you, Mary, when you clean?” Hortense asked. “I’ll help if I can.”

“Sure you may,” said Mary kindly. “I’ll be glad to have you. You’ll be company. Some of those dark closets, and the bedrooms with sheeted chairs and things give me the creeps. An old house and old unused rooms are eerie-like. Sometimes I can almost hear whispers, and sighs, and things talking.”

“I know,” said Hortense. “Everything talks chairs, and tables, and bureaus, and everything. Only I can never hear just what it is they say. Do you think they move sometimes at night?”

“I’ll never look to see,” said Mary piously. “At night I stay in my own little house, where everything is quiet and homelike and there are no queer things about.”

Hortense shivered delightfully. Perhaps she would see and hear the queer things, and even see the “ha’nt” of which Grandfather had spoken.

The kitchen was a large comfortable place. A bright fire was burning in the range. Shining pans hung on the wall, and Aunt Esmerelda, large, fat, and friendly, with a white handkerchief tied over her head, moved slowly among them.

Aunt Esmerelda put her hands on her hips and looked down at Hortense.

“Yo’s the spittin’ image of yo’ ma, honey,” said Aunt Esmerelda. “Does yo’ like ginger cookies?”

Hortense doted on ginger cookies.

“De’s de jar,” said Aunt Esmerelda, pointing to a big crock on the pantry shelf. “Whenevah yo’s hongry, jes’ yo’ he’p yo’se’f.”

Hortense sat on a chair in the corner, out of the way, and watched Aunt Esmerelda cook.

“What was the thing you and Uncle Jonah heard?” she asked at last abruptly.

“Wha’s dat?” Aunt Esmerelda said, dropping a saucepan with a clatter. “Who tole you ’bout dat?”

“I heard Grandpa talking to Grandma about it,” said Hortense.

“It wan’t nothin’?” said Esmerelda uneasily. “Don’ yo’ go ‘citin’ yo’se’f ‘bout dat. Jes’ foolishness.”

“But if there is a ‘ha’nt’ in the house, I want to see it,” Hortense persisted.

Aunt Esmerelda stared at her with big eyes.

“Who all said anythin’ ’bout dis yere ha’nt? I ain’t never heard of no ha’nt.”

“When you hear it again, please wake me up if I’m asleep,” said Hortense.

“Heavens, I don’ get outa’ mah bed w’en I hears nothin’,” said Aunt Esmerelda. “Not by no means. E’n if yo’ hears anythin’, jes’ yo’ shut yo’ eahs and pull the kivers ovah yo’ head. Den dey don’ git yo’.”

But Hortense felt quite brave by the bright kitchen fire. She sat very quietly and watched Aunt Esmerelda at work. The kitchen was filled with bright friendly things shining pans and spoons, a squat, fat milk jug with a smiling face, a rolling pin that looked very stupid, an egg beater that surely must get as dizzy as a whirling dervish turning round and round very fast probably quite a scatterbrain, Hortense thought.

“What is that, Aunt Esmerelda?” Hortense asked, pointing to a bright rounded utensil hanging above the kitchen table.

Aunt Esmerelda looked.

“Dat’s a grater, chile. I grates cheese an’ potatoes an’ cabbage an’ things wid dat.”

She took down the grater.

“On dis side it grates things small and on dis side big.”

She hung it in its place again.

“It looks wicked to me,” said Hortense. “I shouldn’t like to meet it wandering around the house at night.”

“Laws, chile, how yo’ talks,” Aunt Esmerelda exclaimed startled. “Yo’ gives me de fidgets. Wheh yo’ git ideas like dat?”

“Things look that way,” said Hortense. “Some look friendly and some unfriendly. There’s the cat and the teakettle. They aren’t friendly. They say all sorts of sly things. Sometime I’m going to hear what they are. The grater would run after you and scrape you on his sharp sides if he could.”

Aunt Esmerelda shook her head uneasily. From time to time she stared at Hortense.

“Yo’s a curyus chile,” she muttered. “I don’ know what yo’ ma means a-bringin’ yo’ up disaway, scaihin’ po’ olé Aunt Esmerelda. Lan’s sakes, if I ain’t done forgit de pertatahs! An’ dey’s all in de stoh’room!”

“Where’s that?” Hortense asked much interested.

“In de basement,” said Aunt Esmerelda, “an’ it’s powahful dark down deh.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Hortense eagerly. “I’d like to see it.”

Aunt Esmerelda lighted a candle and, taking a large pan, opened the door leading to the basement.

It was a large basement, and the candle was not sufficient to light its more remote corners. They passed a huge dark furnace with its arms stretching out on all sides like a spider’s legs. In front of it was a coal bin, large and black.

Aunt Esmerelda opened the door of the storeroom. Within were barrels and boxes, and hanging shelves laden with row upon row of preserves in jars and regiments of jelly glasses, each with its paper top and its white label.

Aunt Esmerelda filled her pan with potatoes from the barrel and led the way from the storeroom. Closing the door, she led the way back upstairs.

A sudden noise of something falling and of little scurrying feet led her to stop abruptly. Hortense drew close to her. Aunt Esmerelda was shaking, and by the light of the candle Hortense could see the whites of her eyes gleaming as she looked all about her.

They started again for the cellar stairs. When they had reached the furnace, a sudden gust of wind blew out the candle. In a far corner of the cellar something rattled.

Aunt Esmerelda started to run, and Hortense ran after her. A faint light from the kitchen shone on the head of the cellar stairs. Aunt Esmerelda hurried up the stairs, panting, with Hortense at her heels. At the top Aunt Esmerelda slammed and bolted the door; then she sank into a chair and mopped her perspiring face.

“Do you think it was the ’ha’nt’?” Hortense asked much excited.

“Don’ speak to me ’bout no ha’nt!” exclaimed Aunt Esmerelda angrily. “Yo’ sho’ scaihs me. Run along and git ready fo’ dinnah.”

Though Hortense lingered, Aunt Esmerelda would not say another word, and finally Hortense went to change her dress.