Page:Passions 2.pdf/426

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''Will. (eagerly.)'' In the room overhead did you say? and in the morning? about this time?

Land. I don't know if just at this very time.

Will. I dare she is.(going out eagerly.)

Bea. But you wanted to read that paragraph about your friend, William, and here is the newspaper just come.

''Will. (impatiently.)'' O hang it! not now: I don't care if I never read it.(Exit quickly.

''Bea. (to'' Land.) And he can't sleep in his bed, they say, for writing letters to great people?

Land. Yes Sir, so they say; but there may be other reasons for a man not resting in his bed.

Bea. And what other reasons may there be?

Land. Sir, my grandfather was sexton of the parish, and would have thought nothing of digging you a grave in a dark winter evening, or ringing the church bell in the middle of the night, with never a living creature near him but his dog and his lantern, and I have myself sat up with dead corpses ere now, and I can't but say they always lay very quietly when I was with them; therefore I'm not a very likely person, you know, to give heed to foolish stories about ghosts and such like. Howsomever, the servants say that they hear strange noises since their new lady came home; and some of them swears that they have heard their late lady's footsteps walking along the hall in the middle of the night, as plainly as when she was alive.

Bea. That is strange enough, landlady.