“Beg pardon, sir,” he rejoined: “but it's a habit. I've tried very hard to fit myself to English ways and it's got to be second nature, sir. My voice I can't change; but my class--I was a barber in America, sir--my class I have learned. And,” he repeated rather vacantly, “I just dropped by to see if you wanted a ghost. Being fellow Americans, you know, I thought----” His voice trailed off into humble silence, and he stood twisting a shadowy hat round and round in his fingers. “See here!” I said. “Should we have a ghost?” “Beg pardon, sir, but how much rent do you pay?” I told him. He answered politely but with decision, “Then, sir, in all fairness, you are entitled to a ghost with the place. It gives a certain tone, sir.” “Why weren't we given one, then?” I asked “Well----” he said, and paused. If a ghost can blush with embarrassment, he blushed. “You see,” he went on, making it as easy for me as he could, “English ghosts mostly object to haunting Americans, just as American ghosts find it difficult to get places in English houses and cottages. You see, sir, we are----” He halted lamely, and then finished, “We're so _American_ somehow, sir.” “But we've been cheated!” I said. “Yes, sir,” said the American ghost, “regularly _had_” He said it in quite an English manner, and I complimented him on his achievement. He smiled with a child's delight. “Would I do?” he urged again, with a kind of timid insistence. My sympathies were with him. “You don't mind children?” I said. “We have two.” “No,” he replied; “leastways, if they aren't very rough, I am not much frightened of them.” “I guess,” I began, “that----” I was about to say that he would do, when my wife interrupted me. “We do not want a ghost at all,” she said firmly. “But, my dear----” She raised her eyebrows at me, and I was silent. After looking from one to the other of us wistfully for a moment, the applicant turned and drifted away, vanishing dejectedly when he reached the gate. “You heard what he said, Henry?” said my wife as he disappeared. “It is lucky that you have me by you! Do you want to saddle yourself with an American ghost? For my part, I will have an English ghost or none!” I realized that Marian was right; but I felt sorry for the ghost. “What did--the fellow--want?” roared Uncle Bain-bridge, who is deaf, and brings out his words two or three at a time. “Wanted to know--if we wanted--a ghost!” I roared in reply. “Goat? Goat? Huh-huh!” shouted Uncle Bain-bridge. “No, sir! Get 'em a pony--and a cart--little cart! That's the best--thing--for the kids!”