Tennant and Kitty Bruce went away; we had a real drift-wood fire, and
blew out the lights and told stories. Miss Margaret knows so many and
tells them so well. Kate and I were unusually entertaining, for we
became familiar with the family record of the town, and could recount
marvellous adventures by land and sea, and ghost-stories by the dozen.
We had never either of us been in a society consisting of so many
travelled people! Hardly a man but had been the most of his life at sea.
Speaking of ghost-stories, I must tell you that once in the summer two
Cambridge girls who were spending a week with us unwisely enticed us
into giving some thrilling recitals, which nearly frightened them out of
their wits, and Kate and I were finally in terror ourselves. We had all
been on the sofa in the dark, singing and talking, and were waiting in
great suspense after I had finished one of such particular horror that I
declared it should be the last, when we heard footsteps on the hall
stairs. There were lights in the dining-room which shone faintly through
the half-closed door, and we saw something white and shapeless come
slowly down, and clutched each other's gowns in agony. It was only
Kate's dog, who came in and laid his head in her lap and slept
peacefully. We thought we could not sleep a wink after this, and I
bravely went alone out to the light to see my watch, and, finding it was
past twelve, we concluded to sit up all night and to go down to the
shore at sunrise, it would be so much easier than getting up early some
morning. We had been out rowing and had taken a long walk the day
before, and were obliged to dance and make other slight exertions to
keep ourselves awake at one time. We lunched at two, and I never shall
forget the sunrise that morning; but we were singularly quiet and
abstracted that day, and indeed for several days after Deephaven was "a
land in which it seemed always afternoon," we breakfasted so late.

As Mrs. Kew had said, there was "a power of china." Kate and I were