The
little room was almost cheerful. There were no sounds except those from
without, the neigh of George Washington from his stall, the cackle of
the hens, the hungry grunts of Patrick Henry, the pig, in his sty beside
the kitchen.
Thankful looked and listened. Then she made a careful examination of the
room, but found nothing mysterious or out of the ordinary. And yet there
was a mystery there. She had long since decided that her own experience
in that room had been imagination, but now that conviction was shaken.
Miss Timpson must have heard something; she HAD heard something which
frightened her into leaving the boarding-house she professed to like so
well. Ghost or no ghost, Miss Timpson had gone; and one more source of
income upon which Mrs. Barnes had depended went with her. Slowly, and
with the feeling that not only this world but the next was conspiring to
bring about the failure of her enterprise and the ruin of her plans and
her hopes, Thankful descended the stairs to the kitchen and set about
preparing breakfast.
CHAPTER XII
Mr. Caleb Hammond rose that Sunday morning with a partially developed
attack of indigestion and a thoroughly developed "grouch."
The indigestion was due to an injudicious partaking of light
refreshment--sandwiches, ice cream and sarsaparilla "tonic"--at the
club the previous evening. Simeon Baker had paid for the refreshment,
ordering the supplies sent in from Mr. Chris Badger's store. Simeon had
received an unexpected high price for cranberries shipped to New York,
and was in consequence "flush" and reckless.
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