A Warning to the Curious, and Other Ghost StoriesJames, M. R. (Montague Rhodes)
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A Warning to the Curious, and Other Ghost Stories
James, M. R. (Montague Rhodes)
English fiction -- 20th century; Ghost stories, English; Short stories, English
“Yes, Master Henry, I’m nearly done now, and time, too, for I don’t
know what they’ll think about me in the servants’ ’all. Well, this
business of the scalding was some few years before Mr Baxter was took,
and he got about again, and went on just as he’d used. And one of the
last jobs he done was finishing up them actual glasses what you took
out last night. You see he’d made the body of them some long time, and
got the pieces of glass for them, but there was somethink wanted to
finish ’em, whatever it was, I don’t know, but I picked up the frame
one day, and I says: ‘Mr Baxter, why don’t you make a job of this?’
And he says, ‘Ah, when I’ve done that, you’ll hear news, you will:
there’s going to be no such pair of glasses as mine when they’re filled
and sealed,’ and there he stopped, and I says: ‘Why, Mr Baxter, you
talk as if they was wine bottles: filled and sealed--why, where’s the
necessity for that?’ ‘Did I say filled and sealed?’ he says, ‘O, well,
I was suiting my conversation to my company.’ Well, then come round
this time of year, and one fine evening, I was passing his shop on my
way home, and he was standing on the step, very pleased with hisself,
and he says: ‘All right and tight now: my best bit of work’s finished,
and I’ll be out with ’em to-morrow.’ ‘What, finished them glasses?’ I
says, ‘might I have a look at them?’ ‘No, no,’ he says, ‘I’ve put ’em
to bed for to-night, and when I do show ’em you, you’ll have to pay for
peepin’, so I tell you.’ And that, gentlemen, were the last words I
heard that man say.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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