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those of most of the others. There was something of elegance in her
movements and more grace than one could mentally connect with a
skeleton. She held her head very much to one side and reminded him of
the girls he had read about in the old romances, "bending over her
tambour frame, with her eyes cast down modestly while her lovely eyes
were suffused with tears of sensibility."

On one side of the head which was turned to the newspaper man there was
a long curl of silky brown hair. This she twisted constantly with her
bony fingers and smoothed with apparent affection, a sentiment which the
young man understood when, by an unfortunate movement she half turned
her head and he saw that there was not another spear of hair on her
whole skull. Between a desire to laugh at the utter ridiculousness of
her pretension, and pity for the little feminine vanity that made her
cling to her one poor lone curl, the young man retired into the shadows
made by the decorations, and that is how he happened to hear the
conversation of several lady ghosts.

As soon as the banquet was finished, the Egyptian princess had been
installed in her high chair, and she held audience with as many men as
could crowd around her, and so the women were in a measure left to
themselves. They gathered into groups and fell to discussing various
subjects. Some told of what they had been doing the evening before, when
they were abroad in their spiritual form only. One of them said sadly:

"I went to the place where my husband and I always loved to be. I
thought perhaps he might be there, for he promised me as I lay dying
that on every anniversary of my death he would go there. It was there
that we had become engaged, and we were so happy there-"

"Did he come?" asked she of the lone curl.

"Yes; he did come, but he brought another woman with him, and the very
things he used to say to me he said to her. He kissed her and told her
that he had never loved anyone as he loved her, for such love comes but
once in a lifetime. She is the fifth woman to whom I have heard him say
the same things. I wish he would at least seek some other place for his
foolishness, for you cannot imagine how foolish it seems to hear a man
make love to another woman. He wouldn't be my choice of a man anyhow if
I had my life to live over again. It will be a happy day when I get my
passport and can leave all these worries behind."

Here was the question of passports again, and yet the newspaper man did
not know what it meant. He began to blame himself for remissness in his
duty, and to fear that he would find himself outside without having
learned it. So he made up his mind that he would ask his host about it
the first thing when he should find him again.

The second woman took up the conversation and said:

"Well, Mary, your lot is not so hard as mine. You had no little children
to leave. When I died I went to my old home and hovered over my little
children, knowing that they needed a mother's care, and there sat
another woman beside the cradle, and it was she who answered when my
baby cried. It was the first time the baby spoke and she called that
woman mother."

At this moment the girl with the curl, as the reporter called her, began
to complain again, but this time it was about the grave of Charlotte
Temple.

"Really it wearies me to see what a ridiculous fuss all the lovelorn
fools make about her grave. And, she got her passport long ago. Really I
think that is paying a premium on weakness. One would think she was the
only one to be disappointed in a man. Here come any number of silly
things every day and nearly always bring something to put on her slab,
which isn't much, anyhow. Not a word of epitaph, nothing but her name.

"The only thing good about it is that someone hollowed out a place so
that birds can drink out of it. After a rain there may be some water
there, but it soon dries up, and others bring flower pots and bouquets
for poor Floyd to sweep away. I noticed tonight that there was a scrubby
little fish geranium in a dried up pot standing there and a most forlorn
little kitten was trying to find a few drops of water."

The young man instantly resolved that he would find that poor little
kitten which, he felt sure, was the very one at which he had shied the
stone. His mother would not object, so having set his conscience at
rest, as so many of us do by promising to right a wrong-later on-he
found himself again listening when one of the other women took up the
conversation, and looking at the Egyptian, who still seemed to monopolize
the gentlemen ghosts to a most scandalous extent and remarked:

"I think a woman as black as that mummy ought not to be allowed here
among us. As to princesses of her time, they were no better than they
should be, and if history is correct, they went about in such a state as
to scandalize anybody. They certainly couldn't have been pretty with
those black faces. And I, for one, don't think they should be set up for
miracles either."

At this moment there passed a queer-looking woman ghost. Her back was
bad and her legs were queer, like those of poor little Jenny Wren, and
she had, in spite of her affliction, such a grand air of importance that
she was remarkable among all the ghosts. As she passed the girl with the
curl, she gave her head a toss as if she really intended an insult. As
soon as she had passed out of hearing, the girl with the curl turned to
the others and said:

"Did you see Mrs. Simon Mullinstalk? I imagine you will know her the next
time you do, for she is so proud of that name that she tries to project
her personality everywhere. Did you ever hear how she came by that
magnificent name?"

"No," they all said in a chorus, "who is she, anyway?"

"Why she was an old maid, and her name was Susannah Skinks. She was the
only daughter of old Solon Skinks. He had a snug little fortune, but was
such a miser that they never had enough to eat. I have heard my mother
say that it was working beyond her strength while she was small that she
became as you see her. When her father died-her mother had died long
before-he gave her all he had, on the promise that while she lived she
would never marry anyone. She kept her promise, but when she lay upon
her deathbed-she was then forty-eight years old-she for some reason felt
that she did not wish to have her name and age go down to posterity on
her tombstone as an old maid. She unbosomed her feelings to her pastor.
He knew she had money and might remember the missionary work in which he
was interested, and advised her, saying that she was practically dead
now, and there could be no harm in making a deathbed marriage.

"They sent for the man whose name appealed to her. He was a hopeless
paralytic, and had to be brought to her. They were left alone while she
unfolded her plan to him. She wanted to be able to have 'Mrs.' on her
tombstone, and if he consented to marry her now, she would will him
everything she possessed. This just suited him, for the co

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