Cecilia de Noël

"Well, what is a ghost?"

"A ghost is nothing--an airy nothing manufactured by your own disordered senses of your own over-excited brain."

"I beg to observe that I never saw a ghost in my life."

"I am glad to hear it. It does you credit. If ever any one had an excuse for seeing a ghost it would be a man whose spine was jarred. But I meant nothing personal by the pronoun--only to give greater force to my remarks. The first person singular will do instead. The ghost belongs to the same lot, as the faces that make mouths at me when I have brain-fever, the reptiles that crawl about when I have an attack of the D.T., or--to take a more familiar example--the spots I see floating before my eyes when my liver is out of order. You will allow there is nothing supernatural in all that?"

"Certainly. Though, did not that pretty niece of Mrs. Molyneux's say she used to see those spots floating before her eyes when a misfortune was impending?"

"I fancy she did, and tr