“Bill’s home,” she said first. “He just got in. He’s glad he’s going to meet you. He likes baseball too. I have something to tell you, but I don’t just know how. It is a delicate thing to say and requires womanly tact, of which I have not much, since father whips us if we tell fibs. That kind of an upbringing is an awful handicap.”

She sat down after this, and began to plait her handkerchief.

“If you feel as if you ought to say it,” I said, “go to it. I won’t mind.” And she did.

“It’s about the bracelet,” she said. “Mother doesn’t believe in such things, but Aunt Eliza (she’s our cook) knows all about them, and she says that probably the ghost of the first owner has put a ‘hant’ on it. . . .”

all

she

“I don’t believe in such stuff,” I answered. “You know how niggers are.”

“I know,” Mary Elinor answered, “but--well, look here, your own mother thought so.”

mother

“Thought what?” I asked, and quickly. I was getting excited, and I wanted her to come to the point.

“Thought Madam Jumel didn’t want anyone to wear her bracelet, and made them unhappy--in some queer way--if they did. Everyone who wears that bracelet has awful things happen to ’em!”

Everyone who wears that bracelet has awful things happen to ’em!

“What?” I asked. I sat down on the foot of the bed.

“Well, mother said your mother said that because she wore it the first time your father kissed her, he died with pneumonia before he’d ever seen you. She said that made it.”

that

“I don’t believe it,” I asserted. I was annoyed. It didn’t sound like Mrs. Crane. Mary Elinor bridled, and her eyes snapped.

“Then don’t,” she said. “I only thought someone ought to tell you, before something frightful happened to you. And I don’t lie, Miss Natalie Page. You can ask my father, because he taught me not to and----”

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