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cold,” he said. I joined the merry party upstairs, and was received by my Tilly with open, arms, and by my uncle Bonsor with an open, waistcoat. I partook in cheerful moderation of the snapdragon festivities of Christmas-eve. We all dined together on Christmas-day, and I helped the soup and carved a turkey, beautifully; and on the morrow, Boxing-day, was complimented by my uncle’s lawyer on my remarkably neat caligraphy, as displayed in the signatures to the necessary legal documents. On the twenty-seventh of December, eighteen, forty-six, I was married to my darling Tilly, and was going to live happy ever afterwards, when —really did wake in bed in this Haunted House—and found that I had been very much shaken on the railway coming down, and that there was no marriage, no Tilly, no Mary Seaton, no Van Plank, no anything but myself and the Ghost of the Ague, and the two inner windows of the Double Room rattling like the ghosts of two departed watchmen who wanted spiritual assistance to carry me to the dead and gone old Watch-house,



, with a modest self-possession quite her own, promptly answered for this Spectre in a low, clear voice: