“Tell me about your friend,” she said. “Was she pretty, and good, and happy? I like to know who has occupied my room before me. At Stonewark, where we were a few weeks last summer, they said my room was haunted by a girl who killed herself for love. Auntie did not wish me to sleep there. She’s a bit superstitious, but I was not afraid. I liked it, and tried to keep awake nights to see the ghost which threw itself out of the window just at midnight, but I always went to sleep before it came. Where is Heloise, now?” I did not know, but, questioned by the eager little girl, I told a part of the story, and then, as she grew interested and begged for “the whole, the very whole,” I told it her, thinking there was no harm in telling, as no one could be wronged. Heloise was either married or dead, the latter probably, or she would have written to me, and so it was no matter if I did tell her story and Abelard’s to the child who listened so intently, her eyes filling with tears, which rolled down her cheeks when I spoke of the dead man lying on the grass, his face all wet with blood and a withered white rose pressed inside his flannel shirt. I suppose she cried for him, and to a certain extent I dare say she did, though her first words were: “Poor fellow, I’m so glad he didn’t let Godfrey be killed.” This was the first time she had mentioned Godfrey to me, and as I had the impression that she did not know him, I was going to ask her about it when she said, eagerly: “And he was the young girl’s lover, and she only fifteen; that’s funny. I’m twelve, and I should not think of having a beau; but go on and tell me more, and what they did with him, and what she did, and all of them.” I told her what they did, and how for a day and a night the body lay in the parlor below, and where they buried it, and about the monument and my promise to keep the grave clean and nice. “And have you done it?” Gertie asked, her cheeks like roses and her eyes as bright as stars. I confessed to recent neglect, and said I had not been there once during the summer. “Then it’s awful by this time,” Gertie said. “Let’s go and fix it to-morrow, you and I, will you?” I promised that I would, and then, as it was growing dark, I bade her good-night, she saying to me in a whisper: “I’ll not tell auntie about that girl who used to have my room, because if I did I’d have to tell about the body which lay in the parlor, and she would surely see his ghost. She’s afraid of ’em, you know. I guess that class always are.”