Kit rolled over on the grass in delight at this. “That’s a riot,” she laughed. “Tell some more, Etoile.”
“We’ve got a haunted house on our road,” Astrid said in a lowered voice. “The little spring house between the old mill and our place. It’s been there years and years, my father says. He knows the old man at the mill, and he told him. As far back as they can remember it has always been haunted. First there lived an old watchmaker there. He had clocks and watches all over the house, and they ticked all the time.”
“Maybe they kept him from being lonely,” Doris suggested.
“He was very strange, and when he died, then two old Indian women came to live there. And there was a peddler used to go through and put up overnight there, and he never was seen any more.”
“You can see the grave in the cellar where they buried him,” Ingeborg whispered. “Right down at the foot of the stairs. And at night he comes up and goes all around the house, rattling chains. Yes, he does. My brother went down with some of the boys and stayed there just to find out and they heard him.”
“Let’s go over there on our hike and stay overnight, kids,” Kit exclaimed. “I think it would be swell.”
“Don’t you believe in ghosts, Kit?” asked Lucy. “I don’t like to believe in them, but I just thought they had to be believed in if they’re really so.”
“No, I don’t. We’ll stay overnight at the spring house, kids. It’s a shame to have a real ghost around and not make it welcome. If there are any ghosts, which I doubt, they must be the lonesomest creatures in all creation because nobody wants them around. Suppose we say that next Friday we’ll walk up to the house and camp out for the night. Who’s afraid?”
The girls looked at each other doubtfully.
“Can I bring our dog along?” asked Ingeborg. “Then I’m not afraid, I don’t think.”
“Bring anything you like. I’m going to take a flashlight. Here comes our roller, now. We’d better finish the tennis court.”
Rebecca told the story of the old spring house when they saw her. She could remember Scotty McDougal, the old watchmaker who had lived there.
“Land, yes, I should say I could. He used to wear an old coonskin cap with the tail hanging down, and carried an old gun along with him wherever he went. After he died, two old women moved in from somewhere in the woods toward Dayville. They were Indian, I guess, or gypsy, real good-hearted people so far as I could see. Used to weave carpet and rag rugs and make baskets. There was a story around that they could tell fortunes and see things in the future, but that’s just talk. I never pay any attention to such things at all. Probably, if you could clear the house of its name, somebody’d be willing to live in it. It belongs to Judge Ellis.”