"You had better do nothing in a hurry," observed Susan Pearl, a sensible, pleasant-looking woman, who had been Emmie's attendant when she was a child, and who acted as her lady's-maid now. "You may find that second thoughts are best, when the matter in question is throwing up a good place." "Then master had better have his second thoughts too," observed John, as he stretched out his hand for the walnut pickle. "A week of Myst Court was quite enough for me, I assure you. If you were to see how the mortar is starting from the brickwork, how the plaster is peeling from the ceilings, and how the furniture is faded; if you were to hear the windows shaking and rattling as if they had a fit of the ague, the boards creaking, and the long passages echoing, you would think any sensible man well out of so dreary a prison." "Plaster and paint can be put on anew, a carpet deadens echoes, and curtains keep out draughts. As for windows rattling, a peg will stop that," observed Susan, who was not easily daunted. "Outside the house it's as bad as within," pursued John. "The drive is green with moss and grass, and the piece of water with duckweed; the trees grow so thick together that you can't see ten yards before you; and your ears are dinned with the cawing of rooks." "Weeding and clearing will do wonders," said Susan; "if Miss Emmie were set in a coal-yard, she would manage to make flowers grow there." "Are there good shops near?" inquired Ann, the housemaid, who wore a cap of the newest pattern, trimmed with the gayest of ribbons. "Shops!" echoed John, as if amazed at the question. "Why, the very baker and grocer have to come in their carts from S----, and there's nothing like a gentleman's house within several miles of Myst Court." "I'll give warning to-morrow," said Ann. "As well be transported at once, as go to such a heathenish out-of-the-way place as that is!" "I suppose that Myst Court is overrun with rats and mice," observed Mullins the cook. "Not a bit of it," answered John, laughing. "Thieving rats and mice would have had a hard life of it with old Mrs. Myers' nine and thirty cats and kittens to serve as a rural police." "La, John, you're joking! nine and thirty!" exclaimed the women-servants in a breath. "I'm not joking," replied the footman; "I counted them,--black, white, gray, and tabby, long hair and short hair, blue eyes and green eyes! Mrs. Myers cared a deal more for her cats than she did for her tenants' children. No, no, the rats and mice would find no safe corner in that big old house, unless in the shut-up, haunted chamber." Whenever these last two words were pronounced, curiosity was certain to be roused, and questioning to follow. Three voices now spoke at once. "Do you think that the place is really haunted?" "Did you see any ghosts?" "What do the servants say about that chamber?" The last question, which was Susan's, was that to which John gave reply.