He replied in the negative, whereupon she brought up from under a pile of pillows, coverlets, blankets and sheets, a little tiny, red-faced, wrinkled thing, to which she said I was _Aunt_! I knew, then, why Ada congratulated Herbert, and mentally chiding myself for my stupidity, I took the bundle of cambric and flannel in my arms, while Anna said, “We call him Jamie Lee, and we think he looks like you. Isn’t he a beauty?” He _did_ look like me, and knowing that, I wondered at Anna’s question; but where is the young mother who thinks her first born baby homely?—though his nose be flat—his forehead low—and his mouth extend from ear to ear! Not Anna, most certainly. He was _her_ baby and Herbert’s, and to her partial eyes he was beautiful, even though he did resemble _me_, whom but one person had ever called pretty. As for myself, I hardly knew whether to be pleased with my new relative or not. Babies, particularly little tiny ones, had never been my special delight, but on this occasion, feeling that some demonstration was expected from me, I kissed my little nephew, who returned my greeting with a wry face, and an outcry so loud that Anna, in great alarm lest he was “going into a fit,” summoned from the kitchen, where she was enjoying a _quiet smoke_, Aunty Matson, who boasted of having washed and dressed two hundred and fifty babies, and who confidently expected to do the same service for two hundred and fifty more ere her life’s sun was set. Wearied with my ride, I asked permission to retire early; whereupon Dame Matson volunteered to show me the way to my room. Up the narrow stairs, which creaked at every step, and on through one gloomy room after another, she led me until, at last, we came to a chamber, lighter and more airy, which, she said, my sister had papered, painted, and fitted up for me; adding, as she set the candle upon the table and closed the window, “You ain’t afraid of _spooks_ nor nothin’?” “_Spooks_” was to me a new word, and in some surprise I asked what she meant. “Now, du tell,” she replied, seating herself upon the foot of the bed. “Now, du tell a body where you was brought up, that you don’t know what a _spook_ is! Why, it’s a _sperrit_—a ghost—and this house, they say, is full on ’em. But I don’t b’lieve a word on’t. S’posin’ a gal was murdered near forty years ago, ’tain’t likely she haunts the place yet, and then, too, she warn’t none of the best of girls, I guess, from what I’ve heard my mother say.”