Ghosts I Have Been by Richard Peck

Author:Richard Peck [Peck, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101664353
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2001-04-22T16:00:00+00:00

10

I WAS EVERYWHERE at once that next day, except at school. Not knowing when Professor Regis would turn up at the Odd Fellows Hall, I had to be there with time to spare, stowed away in the cabinet and already tricked out as Sybil. This part of the plan seemed foolproof because the Professor is a drinking man. And a drinking man is rarely alert early in the day.

Alexander’s job was to hang out near the Cornhusker Hotel saloon. When Professor Regis issued forth, Alexander was to locate me posthaste. My first stop was at Miss Dabney’s. Here I expected the worst. I’d left her raving and then knocked out by hot milk. I feared for her mind, but I reckoned without her grit.

She greeted me at the door, very grave. Her long face was stretched to record length. She looked like one suddenly sobered. A tragic heroine—Lady Macbeth or some such.

School days and hooky are nothing to her. Expecting I’d shortly be at her side, she’d laid out a breakfast in the parlor. There were hot English scones and herb tea. After I’d eaten my fill under her gaze, she intoned, “Well, Blossom, Bluff City has called me an eccentric old fool for many a long and weary year. Yesterday I fulfilled their fondest notions.”

I shifted uncomfortably. The hall clock struck, and we both thought of her papa’s missing pocket watch. “And a fine example I am to a young and impressionable girl such as yourself,” she rambled on. “What could have come over me to be bamboozled by a transparent faker? I am mortified to my soul. I felt myself being drawn under the dastard’s influence and was powerless in his grip. And the very idea of dear Papa speaking to me in that awful, shrill voice: ‘Oiuwwww, Gertrude, my little love, art . . . thou . . . happy?’ indeed!”

“Your sensibilities was being played on,” I consoled. “The Professor and that Sybil knew you was faithful in your heart to your departed papa, and their whole low scheme depended on it.”

“How true. My idiotic sentimentality clouded my judgment. I was nothing more than a—a—”

“Sitting duck,” I said, and Miss Dabney agreed.

“You are a kindly and understanding child, Blossom.” (Here I fidgeted under the weight of Miss Dabney’s charity.) “But I daresay the seance room was full of gossips who will forget their own foolishness in remembering mine. I am nothing but a half-crazed, feather-headed . . . old . . . maid.” The tears zigzagged down her face.

“Don’t call yourself names,” I said in a small voice. “We are a couple of . . . unmarried ladies. And we have to stick together.”

“Oh, Blossom,” she moaned, and the tears flowed freely, some of them mine.

But it was not a time to give way. “We’re not without our defenses,” I piped up. Then I put Miss Dabney in the picture. I told her all about the nighttime raid Alexander and me made on the Odd Fellows Hall. I made it clear that Sybil was mightily mortal, though I left out about her being English.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.