The Ghost and Mrs. Muir Read Online Free PDF Page A

gives everyone the willies, this ’ouse does.”
    “You be orf,” snapped Martha, “or I’ll give you the willies where you’ll feel it most.”
    The boy winked again and rode away, whistling “John Brown’s Body” with piercing distinctness.
    “Ghosts!” snorted Martha, who had been told by Lucy ofthe alleged haunting of Gull Cottage before undertaking the journey. “Ghosts! There’s no such thing!” She brought in the package, undid it, filled the stove and lighted it, and put a kettle of water on to boil.
    At half-past one they paused in their labours to drink tea and eat some of the provisions Lucy had brought with them.
    The kitchen was now habitable. Mattresses, pillows, and blankets from the bedrooms were airing on the clothes-line in the sunny back garden and on the bushes surrounding it. All the windows in the house were flung open wide, and the crisp air from the sea was pouring its clean saltness all through the rooms.
    “Nice little ’ouse,” said Martha, blowing on her dark, syrupy sweet tea to cool it, “I wish I was comin’ ter look after yer in it, mum.”
    “I wish you were, too,” said Lucy, “but I shan’t be able to afford a maid, you know.”
    “However you’ll manage I don’t know,” said Martha pessimistically, “and you never boiled a egg in your life. Still cookin’s easy if you use your ’ead and don’t get flustered—and now,” she went on, draining her cup and banging it down on the table, “you sit a while, mum, and I’ll get on with the hupstairs.” She filled her bucket from the kettle of water boiling on the stove and then stumped away upstairs.
    We haven’t heard a thing, thought Lucy, not a thing. I don’t believe the house is haunted at all, and, leaning back in her chair, she began to rearrange the rooms in her mind, discarding and replacing, till she had it perfect in her imagination.
    By nightfall all the rooms except the sitting-room and the dining-room were cleansed of cobwebs and swept ofdust. “We can do those to-morrow,” said Lucy as she and Martha made up the bed together in the front room upstairs.
    “You don’t want to overdo it, mum,” said Martha, smoothing down the fine linen sheet that Lucy had brought with her in her suitcase over the rough blue blanket. “Suppose you was just to lay down and get ten minutes’ shut-eye, while I pop the eggs and bacon in the pan and cook the supper.”
    “Now, Martha,” said Lucy, shaking a pillow into one of her own embroidered pillow cases, “now, Martha, don’t you begin giving me advice, for I won’t take it from a young thing like you.”
    “Young thing!” said Martha, “and me thirty-two in February! Get along with you, mum.”
    “And I shall be thirty-four in July,” said Lucy. “How we do grow up, don’t we, Martha? Half-way through life already and what have we done?”
    “Well, I know what I done.” Martha grinned. “Cooked enough beef steaks to reach from ’ere to St. Paul’s I shouldn’t wonder, to say nothink of marryin’, and darnin’ enough socks to stuff a elephant!”
    “Yes, you’ve led a very useful life,” said Lucy.
    “Well, mum, you’ve not done so bad yourself, with a couple of children,” said Martha, “and if you’re goin’ to run this ’ouse single ’anded that’s as much as any woman could do.”
    “It’s an easy house to run, don’t you think?” asked Lucy.
    “I never saw a easier,” said Martha, “everythink’s so shipshape and ’andy.”
    “Shipshape,” repeated Lucy, “I never heard you use that word before, Martha.”
    “It’s the ozone, I dare say,” said Martha, “makes you think nautical!”
    “I wonder what Captain Gregg was like,” said Lucy.“From his portrait he doesn’t look at all the sort of man who would take his own life.”
    “Now, now!” said Martha. “You don’t want to think morbid, mum. If you do, next thing we know you’ll be imaginin’ you’re seein’ things.”
    “Or hearing things,”