Here Barnet smiled with ineffable contempt.

"What I'm tellin' them is," continued Mrs. Griffen, warming with her
subject, "maybe that thing was a pairson that's dead, an' might be owin'
a pound to another one, or has something that way on his soul, an' it's
in the want o' some one that'll ax it what's throublin' it. The like o'
thim couldn't spake till ye'll spake to thim first. But, sure, gerrls
has no courage--"

Barnet's smile was again one of wintry superiority.

"Willy Fennessy and Patsey Crimmeen was afther seein' it too last
night," went on Mrs. Griffen, "an' poor Willy was as much frightened! He
said surely 'twas a ghost. On the back avenue it was, an' one minute
'twas as big as an ass, an' another minute it'd be no bigger than a
bonnive--"

"Oh, the Lord save us!" wailed the kitchen-maid irrepressibly from the
scullery.

"I shall speak to Fennessy myself about this," said Mrs. Alexander,
making for the door with concentrated purpose, "and in the meantime I
wish to hear no more of this rubbish."

"I'm sure Fennessy wishes to hear no more of it," said Barnet acridly to
Mrs. Griffen, when Mrs. Alexander had passed swiftly out of hearing,
"after the way those girls have been worryin' on at him about it all the
morning. Such a set out!"

Mrs. Griffen groaned in a polite and general way, and behind Barnet's