Read Online The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by R. A. Dick - Free Book Online Page B

opened them again to see Eva sitting there quite placidly as if she were deaf.
    “Of course she’s deaf,” said the captain, “spiritually deaf. She can’t hear me—she’s only tuned in to earth and herself. And if you have anything to say to me, think it. There’s no need for you to speak to me out loud, I can hear all you think. And don’t you be bullied into going on any blasted cruise.”
    “I won’t,” began Lucy out loud, and stopped abruptly.
    “My dear Lucy, how can you possibly tell whether you will enjoy it or not till you’ve been on it,” said Eva tartly, “and I don’t think it’s very polite to speak in that tone to me when I’m only trying to help you.”
    “It’s very good of you, Eva,” replied Lucy, “but I don’t need any help.”
    “That’s the ticket,” put in the captain.
    “I am perfectly well and happy here,” continued Lucy, emboldened by the captain’s encouragement. “All I want is to be left alone to live my life as I wish and not as other people think best for themselves.”
    “And put that in your pipe and smoke it, madam,” said the captain triumphantly.
    “Really, Lucy, I can’t think what has happened to you lately,” said Eva. “You used to be such a sweet little thing. Lady Smythe always used to say to me, ‘I’m so fond of your sister-in-law, she’s such a sweet little thing’—I doubt if she would say so now.”
    “Who cares a damn what Lady Smythe thinks or doesn’t think?” roared the captain. “Go on, Lucy, tell her that.”
    “I really don’t mind very much what Lady Smythe says about me,” said Lucy. “I don’t mind what any one says about me,” she went on recklessly, “because most gossip is only the evil in people’s own minds coming to the surface.”
    “Splendid!” said the captain. “I didn’t know you had it in you, me dear.”
    “Are you accusing me of having an evil mind?” demanded Eva angrily.
    “Isn’t that typical of the woman,” said the captain, “reducing everything to the personal! She’s beginning to bore me, Lucy, let’s be rid of her.”
    “Because if you are, you have only to say so plainly,” went on Eva, her voice rising. “I mean I like to have things cut and dried——” She broke off suddenly and pulled her kimono more closely about her. “What a draught!” she said peevishly. “Where can it be coming from on such a warm night? I’m chilled to the bone.”
    “It’s me, madam,” said the captain, “and I wish it were a cyclone.”
    “Oh, dear!” giggled Lucy childishly.
    “I see nothing to laugh at in my being frozen to death,” snapped Eva, “nothing at all—but perhaps you think I have no sense of humour as well as an evil mind.”
    “I—I’m not laughing at you,” said Lucy weakly as another gale of merriment shook her.
    “Then what are you laughing at?” asked Eva.
    But Lucy could not tell her.
    “Hysteria,” declared Eva. “I shall take you to a doctor the first thing in the morning.” She rose stiffly from the bed and went out, shutting the door with ostentatious quiet behind her.
    But she did not take Lucy to the doctor on the following morning, for the doctor came to see Eva instead. Her neckwas so stiff that she could not turn her head. Being unused to illness in herself, she made an impatient and most disagreeable invalid.
    “Such draughts!” she complained. “This will be a terrible place in winter.”
    “I don’t feel any draught,” said Lucy gently, “but then I’m really very strong.”
    “Don’t overdo it,” Lucy told the captain that night, “I don’t want her bedridden.”
    “And that’s all the thanks I get for the trouble I’ve taken,” he said with a twinkle in his voice, “but don’t you worry, me dear, I’ll have her out of here in the turn of a screw.”
    Eva’s neck was better by the following day, but her constitution seemed to have suffered. It was true that she went butterfly-catching with Cyril, but she seemed unable to