B. M. Bower

“ Jack can’t endure Professor Goldburn.
“Zella,” began Aunt Jane pointedly, “don’t you think you would be more comfortable in that chair?” (meaning the ghost chair.)
“No, I don’t!” I snapped, very impertinently, I’m afraid—but catch me sitting in that chair again!
Aunt Jane turned to Jack, perched uncomfortably on the stool. (Now Jack is proverbially lazy: he never sits upright when he can lean.)
“Well, Jack! I never knew you to let a cushioned armchair go begging an occupant. What’s the matter?”
“Oh, nothing,” drawled Jack. “You sit there yourself, mother.” ”

“ It’s a wonder she didn’t turn Clifford sick; but, then, men show dreadfully poor taste at times. I don’t suppose I was very entrancing myself just then, but, thank goodness, my complexion will bear washing!
The New Woman reached the shore, upside down, almost as soon as we did, and my old golf-cape, that Aunt Jane insists I shall carry with me always in the boat, dangled on a wave-washed willow. Jack waded in and rescued it and Aunt Jane’s little gray shawl (her green umbrella’s gone forever, for which I am very thankful) . ”

“ Clifford and I weren’t on very friendly terms. We had been engaged, though Aunt Jane didn’t suspect it. But it was all over, and my sweet little ruby ring was lying somewhere off Weir Point, where Clifford threw it one day—but this is a ghost-story.
Nothing happened during the sail except that my hat blew away and Mabel hinted that it wasn’t an accident—that I liked to show off my hair. I said I didn’t show off any hair but what I might justly call my own, and, of course, that made Mabel mad—angry, I mean. Aunt Jane scolded me, as usual: it’s easy to tell which niece has the money. ”

“ Jack sang coon-songs and even did a cake-walk. I got up and helped him in that, just to shock Mabel. She thinks cake-walking is very unladylike, and always looks scandalized when I begin anything of the kind.
Aunt Jane—to punish us, I think—started the Professor going on his pet microbes, and once he was started, no one else had any show whatever. He droned on about bacilli and other horrors, and gravely assured us that old cabin was undoubtedly swarming with awful-sounding germs. ”

“ The water was so shallow we could easily wade ashore, though Mabel called for help, and, of course, it was Clifford who rescued her—from water no deeper than our bathtub! It is incredible, the foolishness of that girl!
I was first to climb the bank, and when I had watched the others land I just sat down in the wind and the rain and laughed. (Mabel says I will probably laugh at my own funeral; I’m positive I could have laughed at hers just then.) The idea of a great, overgrown girl like her (she weighs a hundred and fifty pounds if she weighs an ounce) sobbing on a young man’s shoulder! ”