"No, I do not," replied Miss stark with emphasis.
"Nor in the same bed?" persisted Eliza Lippincott with a kittenish
reflection.
The young minister looked up from his pudding. He was very
spiritual, but he had had poor pickings in his previous boarding
place, and he could not help a certain abstract enjoyment over Miss
Gill's cooking.
"You would certainly not be afraid, Miss Lippincott?" he remarked,
with his gentle, almost caressing inflection of tone. "You do not
for a minute believe that a higher power would allow any
manifestation on the part of a disembodied spirit--who we trust is
in her heavenly home--to harm one of His servants?"
"Oh, Mr. Dunn, of course not," replied Eliza Lippincott with a
blush. "Of course not. I never meant to imply--"
"I could not believe you did," said the minister gently. He was
very young, but he already had a wrinkle of permanent anxiety
between his eyes and a smile of permanent ingratiation on his lips.
The lines of the smile were as deeply marked as the wrinkle.
"Of course dear Miss Harriet Gill was a professing Christian,"
remarked the widow, "and I don't suppose a professing Christian
would come back and scare folks if she could.
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