Free Short Stories 1895-1926 by Walter de la Mare

softly on bough and grass, ‘May-day’s the day, and midnight’s the hour, for such as be wakeful and brazen and stoopid enough to watch it out. And what you’ve got to look for in a manner of speaking is what comes up out of the darkness from behind them trees there!’
    She drew back cunningly.
    The conversation was just like clockwork. It recurred regularly – except that there was no need to wind anything up. It wound itself up over-night, and with such accuracy that Alice soon knew the complete series of question and answer by heart or by rote – as if she had learned them out of the Child’s Guide to Knowledge, or the Catechism. Still there were interesting points in it even now.
    â€˜ And what you’ve got to look for ’ — the you was so absurdly impersonal when muttered in that thick coarse privy voice. And Alice invariably smiled at this little juncture; and Sarah as invariably looked at her and swallowed.
    â€˜But have you looked for – for what you say, you know?’ Alice would then enquire, still with face a little averted towards the black low-boughed group of broad-leafed chestnuts, positive candelabra in their own season of wax-like speckled blossom.
    â€˜Me? Me? I was old before my time, they used to say. Why, besides my poor sister up in Yorkshire there, there’s not a mouth utters my name.’ Her large flushed face smiled in triumphant irony. ‘Besides my bed-rid mistress there, and my old what they call feeble-minded sister, Jane Mary, in Yorkshire, I’m as good as in my grave. I may be dull and hot in the head at times, but I stand alone – eat alone, sit alone, sleep alone, think alone. There’s never been such a lonely person before. Now, what should such a lonely person as me, Miss, I ask you, or what should you either for that matter, be meddling with your Maydays and your haunted gardens for?’ She broke off and stared with angry confusion around her, and, lifting up her open hand a little, she, added hotly, Them birds! – My God, I drats ’em for their squealin’ !’
    â€˜But, why?’ said Alice, frowning slightly.
    â€˜The Lord only knows, Miss; I hate the sight of ’em! If I had what they call a blunderbuss in me hand I’d blow ’em to ribbings.’
    And Alice never could quite understand why it was that the normal pronunciation of the word would have suggested a less complete dismemberment of the victims.
    It was on a bleak day in March that Alice first heard really explicitly the conditions of the quest.
    â€˜Your hows and whys! What I say is I’m sick of it all. Not so much of you, Miss, which is all greens to me, but of the rest of it all! Anyhow, fast you must, like the Cartholics, and you with a frightful hacking cough and all. Come like a new-begotten bride you must in a white gown, and a wreath of lillies or rorringe-blossom in your hair, same pretty much as I made for my mother’s coffin this twenty years ago, and which I wouldn’t do now not for respectability even. And me and my mother, let me tell you, were as close as hens in a roost … But I’m off me subject. There you sits, even if the snow itself comes sailing in on your face, and alone you must be, neither book nor candle, and the house behind you shut up black abed and asleep. But, there; you so wan and sickly a young lady. What ghost would come to you, I’d like to know. You want some fine dark loveyer for a ghost – that’s your ghost. Oo-ay! There’s not a want in the world but’s dust and ashes. That’s my bit of schooling.’
    She gazed on impenetrably at Alice’s slender fingers. And without raising her eyes she leaned her large hands on the wall, ‘Meself, Miss, meself’s my ghost, as they say. Why, bless me! it’s all thro’ the place now, like smoke.’
    What was all through the place now like smoke Alice perceived to be the peculiar