OUR SENTIMENTAL GARDEN 



an objection to their place of burial. And on this score 

 if the anecdote takes me away from gardens, it brings me 

 back to them in the end I have in my mind another tale. It 

 is a true story, as the children say, connected with a house 

 which we have often visited in Ireland : an old monastery, 

 full of that curious depression in its stateliness which 

 so many confiscated church properties retain. It was 

 haunted in many ways. 



Personally, beyond unpleasant sensations in traversing 

 some particular corridor and landing, we never met any 

 ghost in the Abbey. But then we were not placed in the 

 ghost-room. 



An old friend of our hostess, an elderly lady, was not so 

 kindly treated. She was a spinster of robust constitution 

 and strong mind/ a type of the particular generation 

 which comes between the nervous gentility of the Early 

 Victorian sisterhood and the present day " suffrage " 

 community. No doubt the mistress of the Abbey 

 believed her ghost-proof. But she was mistaken. After 

 the first night in the Lavender Bedroom, the visitor's appear- 

 ance at breakfast pointed so conclusively to the fatigue of 

 sleeplessness that, with some misgiving, her friend drew 

 her on one side to question her in private : 

 " Were you disturbed, Lucy ? " 



" I was, Mary/' The maiden lady was not a person 

 of many words. 



" Did you did you ... see anything, Lucy ? " exclaimed 

 the hostess. The family had but lately come into posses- 

 sion/ and the idea of haunters and haunted annoye 

 rather than frightened her. 

 " I did/' said the friend firmly. 

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