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

blue serge, smoking a pipe, be a ghost? Yet the window was open!
    “Did I close the window before we made the bed, Martha?” she asked.
    “Yes, and squeezed your finger, mum,” said Martha. “It’s shut now, ain’t it?”
    “Yes, Martha, it’s shut now,” said Lucy, and wondered why she did not tell Martha of her experience. A strange reluctance kept her silent, but whether from fear of Martha’s scorn or the consequences if she should convince her, she did not stop to think.
    “My, you don’t ’arf look pale, mum,” said Martha as Lucy turned to go downstairs. “I shouldn’t ’ave let you do so much. I’m strong as a ox meself and I forgets other people ain’t so beefy.”
    “I’m strong, too.” Lucy defended herself. “It’s just because I’m small that I’m considered weak. I am strong—I am,” she cried, as if she would reassure herself as to her hardihood of spirit, rather than Martha as to her strength of body.
    “Of course you’re strong, mum, as strong as that there ’Ercules,” said Martha soothingly, “and you’ll feel all the stronger for a nice cup of tea and a bite to eat.”
    Martha was right. Lucy did feel much better after she had had her supper; and after they had eaten, and washed up the dishes, they sat talking over old times—when Cyril and Anna were babies and Martha’s life had been one constant feud with the stiffly-starched nurse who had seen them through their early days—until Martha yawned herself upstairs and away to bed in the back room, leaving Lucy to glance at the newspaper she had bought for the train journey and which she had been too excited to read. Soon she, too, began to yawn, and though it was scarcely half-past nine, she decided that she would fill her hot-water bottle and go early to bed, ready for the hard work of the morrow.
    A hot-water bottle was a weakness, she thought, but a pleasant one, comforting cold feet and making a little warm sanctuary in the coldest bed. They had used all the hot water in the kettle for the washing of the supper things, and she refilled it at the tap before lifting back the top of the Beatrice stove to light the wick; but the only answer to the lighted match was a feeble blue flame that died on the instant to blackness, leaving a puff of paraffin smoke to hang in the air. On shaking the stove it proved to be empty of fuel, as was also the bottle that had contained it.
    “Bother,” said Lucy, “of course it was burning all day and I should have remembered to order more paraffin before the shop shut.”
    The blue hot-water bottle lay limply on the table, cold as a frog to the touch, and the thought of it plump and warm filled Lucy’s tired mind till it became an absolute necessity to her that she should have hot water to pour into it.
    She removed the kettle from the Beatrice stove and put it down with a smack on the gas stove. Lighting another match, she turned on the gas, or attempted to, for though she turned the knob, it still refused to work.
    “Why won’t you light, why won’t you, why won’t you?” Lucy said aloud in exasperation.
    “Because I don’t choose that it should,” said a deep voice.
    Dropping the match-box that she was holding, Lucy stared around the room. There was no one there.
    “I don’t approve of gas,” continued the voice. “I hate the damn stuff, blast it.”
    The voice was not really there either, she did not hear it with her ears. It seemed to come straight into her mind like thought, but how could it be her thought when she never swore even to herself? It must be Captain Gregg speaking to her, and suddenly she was angry, and anger driving out fear, she lashed out at him with fury.
    “You’re selfish and hateful and unreasonable,” she cried. “If you wanted to live in this house, why didn’t you live in it, instead of killing yourself like a stupid, great coward and ruining things for everyone?”
    “I did
not
kill myself, damn it!” The voice seemed to roar through