“I wouldn’t go to Wyther Grange for anything,” said Ilse. “It’s haunted.”
“’Tisn’t.”
“Yes! It’s haunted by a ghost you can feel and hear but never see. Oh, I wouldn’t be you for the world! Your Great-Aunt Nancy is an awful crank and the old woman who lives with her is a witch. She’ll put a spell on you. You’ll pine away and die.”
“I won’t—she isn’t!”
“Is! Why, she makes the stone dogs on the gateposts howl every night if any one comes near the place. They go, ‘Wo-or-oo-oo.’”
Ilse was not a born elocutionist for nothing. Her “wo-or-oo-oo” was extremely gruesome. But it was daylight, and Emily was as brave as a lion in daylight.
“You’re jealous,” she said, and walked off.
“I’m not, you blithering centipede,” Ilse yelled after her. “Putting on airs because your aunt has stone dogs on her gateposts! Why, I know a woman in Shrewsbury who has dogs on her posts that are ten times stonier than your aunt’s!”
But next morning Ilse was over to bid Emily good-bye and entreat her to write every week. Emily was going to drive to Priest Pond with Old Kelly. Aunt Elizabeth was to have driven her but Aunt Elizabeth was not feeling well that day and Aunt Laura could not leave her. Cousin Jimmy had to work at the hay. It looked as if she could not go, and this was rather serious, for Aunt Nancy had been told to expect her that day and Aunt Nancy did not like to be disappointed. If Emily did not turn up at Priest Pond on the day set Great-Aunt Nancy was quite capable of shutting the door in her face when she did appear and telling her to go back home. Nothing less than this conviction would have induced Aunt Elizabeth to fall in with Old Kelly’s suggestion that Emily should ride to Priest Pond with him. His home was on the other side of it and he was going straight there.
