Ballou's Monthly Magazine, Vol. XXVII, No. 1 — page 41: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Our Co-Zenant at the Towers, “Come! Let’s go away!” I said, hastily. We turned to go out. Charlie passed first into the next room, and I had stepped over the threshold, my hand upon the door, just ready to close it, when it was wrenched from my hand and slamined violently upon us. “ My God—what was that ?” It was Charles’s exclamation. ‘The young, red blood had all left his face. I was trem- bling too much to speak, but I tottered out somehow, and holding to Charlie’s hand made uy Way into the light, airy room which we used as our kitchen. Patty, our maid of all work, looked up from the biscuit she was moulding and exclaimed: “Why, Miss Lu, your cheeks are like snow, and it’s ill youll be after all this work.” i looked at Charlie; he was discreetly silent. Just then mother’s bell rang, and 1 ran up stairs to her. Mother was the invalid of our family. She was not our own mother, but a little delicate woman whom my father had taken to his heart during the last years of his lire, and dying, left on our hands. There vere three children, too, the youngest a merry morsel of fun. The others were re- spectively six and eight. Then we had Sophia and May, the twins, just sixteen, and Hugh whe-was twenty-one, and a tall, blue-eyed, moustachioed fellow whom we called the colonel. He was then marching and coun- termarching between the Potomac and tichmond. I had plenty of things to worry about, mother’s ill health, Charlie’s flightiness, the problem as to how the twins were to be edu- cated, and whether Hugh would ever be any- thing but a dreamer; then Winnie, and Jack, and Jamie were always encountering frightful perils by field and flood. And when these ul failed I could always be miserable about Wil. twas never called up stairs by mother’s beil without suspecting a letter containing bed news. I ran up hastily, therefore, and my complexion wasn’t any ruddier when I presented myself at her door. his little stepmother of ours was a won- derfully delicate creature. She was past her fi:tieth birthday now, but her cheeks were as fair as a girl’s, and had that wavering pink eclor in them which is so delicious. Her life was always on the point of going out, and she required to be guarded from all rude shocks with the tenderest care. So when she ex- claimed at my pallor, I made out tosmile and said I supposed I was tired. 0, a “Tm sure you are, dear, and no wonder. But now we are here in this fine old country- place you really ought to begin to pick up. You must insist on the twins doing more— such great, red-cheeked girls ought to do half the work.” I smiled, thinking that if I didn’t get rested till Sophia and May began to help me | should wear out first. “The girls don’t like housework, you know, mamma. But never mind. I dare say we Shall do very well. Patty says the house is so convenient that it will be only fun to do the work.” Mamma drew a little sigh of satisfaction, and glanced around her room. It was a large, airy south chamber, having an outlook over cheerful green fields with blue hills in the distance. All our pretty things somehow gravitated to mamma's room, and it had al- ready, though we had not been twenty-four hours in the house, a cosy, home look. “T really think I shall begin to mend here,” sighed maimma. “You know Doctov Vassar said a room with a southern exposure was whatIneeded. There is, though, just a little too much sunshine here. Don’t you think you could manage to furbish up those oll green chintz curtains? You might darn the rents, I should think—you do such things so nicely.” “IT might line them with soinething, I suppose.” “With rose-colored cambric,” said mamma, eagerly. “That would be so pretty, dear. Do go and get them, Lu, and let’s see what can be done.” So in discussions over the faded curtains the rest of the afternoon waned, and I cid not get a chance to speak to Charlie alone again till after tea. But the first moment I had I said: “What could that have been, Charlie ?” Charlie drew his paper-eutter between the leaves of “ Ballou,” and rephed coolly enough: “Tt seems there is a co-tenant in the house.” “A eo-tenant!’ I echoed. “Mo need of being frightened, Lu. We can’t be hurt—only seared at the worst. I don’t remember knowing a ghost to have done positive harm. Do you?” I didn’t think I did, but what difference did that make? “Td as lief be murdered outright as scared to death!” I said, sitting down quite helplessly. =O, never mind, Lu. I tell you.! thinkit i comicoooks,. com Pele a niteal fan Wil be capita: jun.