Free The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women (Mammoth Books) by Marie O'Regan Page A

announcement:
    “I’ve got a girl!”
    “Oh,” said Michael Bascom, “have you?” and he went on with his book.
    This time he was reading an essay on phosphorus and its functions in relation to the human brain.
    “Yes,” pursued Daniel in his usual grumbling tone; “she was a waif and stray, or I shouldn’t have got her. If she’d been a native she’d never have come to us.”
    “I hope she’s respectable,” said Michael.
    “Respectable! That’s the only fault she has, poor thing. She’s too good for the place. She’s never been in service before, but she says she’s willing to work, and I daresay my old woman will be able to break her in. Her father was a small tradesman at Yarmouth. He died a month ago, and left this poor thing homeless. Mrs Midge at Holcroft is her aunt, and she said to the girl, ‘Come and stay with me till you get a place’; and the girl has been staying with Mrs Midge for the last three weeks, trying to hear of a place. When Mrs Midge heard that my missus wanted a girl to help, she thought it would be the very thing for her niece Maria. Luckily Maria had heard nothing about this house, so the poor innocent dropped me a curtsey, and said she’d be thankful to come, and would do her best to learn her duty. She’d had an easy time of it with her father, who had educated her above her station, like a fool as he was,” growled Daniel.
    “By your own account I’m afraid you’ve made a bad bargain,” said Michael. “You don’t want a young lady to clean kettles and pans.”
    “If she was a young duchess my old woman would make her work,” retorted Skegg decisively.
    “And pray where are you going to put this girl?” asked Mr Bascom, rather irritably. “I can’t have a strange young woman tramping up and down the passages outside my room. You know what a wretched sleeper I am, Skegg. A mouse behind the wainscot is enough to wake me.”
    “I’ve thought of that,” answered the butler, with his look of ineffable wisdom. “I’m not going to put her on your floor. She’s to sleep in the attics.”
    “Which room?”
    “The big one at the north end of the house. That’s the only ceiling that doesn’t let water. She might as well sleep in a shower-bath as in any of the other attics.”
    “The room at the north end,” repeated Mr Bascom thoughtfully; “isn’t that—?”
    “Of course it is,” snapped Skegg, “but she doesn’t know anything about it.”
    Mr Bascom went back to his books, and forgot all about the orphan from Yarmouth, until one morning on entering his study he was startled by the appearance of a strange girl, in a neat black-and-white cotton gown, busy dusting the volumes which were stacked in blocks upon his spacious writing-table – and doing it with such deft and careful hands that he had no inclination to be angry at this unwonted liberty. Old Mrs Skegg had religiously refrained from all such dusting, on the plea that she did not wish to interfere with the master’s ways. One of the master’s ways, therefore, had been to inhale a good deal of dust in the course of his studies.
    The girl was a slim little thing, with a pale and somewhat old-fashioned face, flaxen hair braided under a neat muslin cap, a very fair complexion, and light blue eyes. They were the lightest blue eyes Michael Bascom had ever seen, but there was a sweetness and gentleness in their expression which atoned for their insipid colour.
    “I hope you do not object to my dusting your books, sir,” she said, dropping a curtsey.
    She spoke with a quaint precision which struck Michael Bascom as a pretty thing in its way.
    “No; I don’t object to cleanliness, so long as my books and papers are not disturbed. If you take a volume off my desk, replace it on the spot you took it from. That’s all I ask.”
    “I will be very careful, sir.”
    “When did you come here?”
    “Only this morning, sir.”
    The student seated himself at his desk, and the girl with-drew, drifting out