Page:Carroll - Sylvie and Bruno.djvu/87

v] "You have a real good terrifying Ghost in that book ? " I hinted.

"How could you guess ?" she exclaimed with the most engaging frankness, and placed the volume in my hands. I opened it eagerly, with a not unpleasant thrill (like what a good ghost-story gives one) at the 'uncanny' coincidence of my having so unexpectedly divined the subject of her studies.

It was a book of Domestic Cookery, open at the article ’Bread Sauce.’

I returned the book, looking, I suppose, a little blank, as the lady laughed merrily at my discomfiture. "It's far more exciting than some of the modern ghosts, I assure you ! Now there was a Ghost last month I don't mean a real Ghost in in Supernature but in a Magazine. It was a perfectly flavourless Ghost. It wouldn't have frightened a mouse ! It wasn't a Ghost that one would even offer a chair to !"

"Three score years and ten, baldness, and spectacles, have their advantages after all !" I said to myself. "Instead of a bashful youth and maiden, gasping out monosyllables at awful intervals, here we have an old man and a