You can't imagine how I felt when I saw
it!"
I knew how I felt when I had seen it, but that I couldn't tell Miss
Emmeline. Instead, I held the carnations to my face, to hide my
whitening lips. For once the Boston lady had come into actual
contact with the occult and the unknown.
"She went out by the back door," continued Miss Emmeline, "and I ran
to the window and saw her gray-blanketed figure disappear down the
lane, behind the hedge that separates Mr. Jelnik's grounds from
yours. And all the Hyndses called: '_Jessamine, good-by!_' But she
never turned her head once, nor spoke, nor gave a sign that she
heard. She just _went_, leaving me staring after her. I stared so
hard that I woke myself up. Now, my dears, wasn't that an odd sort
of dream? And so vivid, too! Why, I can hear those voices yet!"
"Well, I'm glad she went," said Alicia. "Ladies that do up their
heads in blankets and won't answer when they're spoken to, ought to
go."
Mrs. Scarboro, Judge Gatchell, and one of my old ladies were dining
with us that night, for which I thanked Heaven. Judge Gatchell
discovered in himself a fund of sly humor that astonished everybody,
and Miss Emmeline was like a November rose, sweet with a shy and
belated girlishness, rarer for a touch of frost.
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