It wanted just one fortnight of Christmas Day when Ada arrived at the Thatched House. For some little time beforehand, I had busied myself so pleasantly in making preparations, that I had almost forgotten the weeping lady, and had not heard the footstep for two nights. And when, on the first evening of her arrival, Ada stepped into the haunted dining-room in her trim flowing robe of crimson cashmere, with her dark hair bound closely round her comely head, and her bright eyes clear with that frank unwavering light of theirs, I felt as if her wholesome presence had banished dread at once, and that ghosts could surely never harbor in the same house with her free step and genial laugh. "What is the matter with you?" said Ada, putting her hands on my shoulders, and looking in my face. "You look like a changeling, you little white thing! When shall I get leave to explore your mystery?" "To-night," I whispered, and, looking round me quickly, shuddered. We were standing on the hearth before the blazing fire, on the very spot where that awful footstep would pass and repass through the long, dark, unhappy hours after our lights had been extinguished, and our heads, laid upon our pillows. Ada laughed at me and called me a little goose; but I could see that she was wild with curiosity, and eager for bedtime to arrive. I had arranged that we should both occupy my room, in order that, if there was anything to be heard, Ada might hear it. "And now what is all this that I have to learn?" said she, after our door had been fastened for the night, and we sat looking at one another with our dressing-gowns upon our shoulders. {70} As I had expected, a long ringing laugh greeted the recital of my doleful tale. "My dear Lucy!" cried Ada, "my poor sick little moped Lucy, you surely don't mean to say that you believe in such vulgar things as ghosts?" "But I cannot help it," I said. "I have heard the footstep no less than seven times, and the proof of it is that I am ill. If you were to sleep alone in this room every night for a month, you would get sick too." "Not a bit of it!" said Ada, stoutly; and she sprang up and walked about the chamber, "To think of getting discontented with this pretty room, this exquisite little nest! No, I engage to sleep here every night for a month--alone, if you please--and at the end of that time, I shall not only be still in perfect health, my unromantic self, but I promise to have cured you, you little, absurd, imaginative thing! And now let us get to bed without another word on the subject. 'Talking it over,' in cases of this kind, always does a vast amount of mischief."