Three Ghost Stories by Charles Dickens
Page: 26

unless he is absolutely roared at, and what alarm has Bottles ever
given, or taken! None."

This was perfectly true; the individual in question having retired,
every night at ten o'clock, to his bed over the coach-house, with no
other company than a pitchfork and a pail of water. That the pail
of water would have been over me, and the pitchfork through me, if I
had put myself without announcement in Bottles's way after that
minute, I had deposited in my own mind as a fact worth remembering.
Neither had Bottles ever taken the least notice of any of our many
uproars. An imperturbable and speechless man, he had sat at his
supper, with Streaker present in a swoon, and the Odd Girl marble,
and had only put another potato in his cheek, or profited by the
general misery to help himself to beefsteak pie.

"And so," continued my sister, "I exempt Bottles. And considering,
John, that the house is too large, and perhaps too lonely, to be
kept well in hand by Bottles, you, and me, I propose that we cast
about among our friends for a certain selected number of the most
reliable and willing--form a Society here for three months--wait
upon ourselves and one another--live cheerfully and socially--and
see what happens."

I was so charmed with my sister, that I embraced her on the spot,
and went into her plan with the greatest ardour.

We were then in the third week of November; but, we took our
measures so vigorously, and were so well seconded by the friends in
whom we confided, that there was still a week of the month
unexpired, when our party all came down together merrily, and
mustered in the haunted house.

I will mention, in this place, two small changes that I made while
my sister and I were yet alone. It occurring to me as not
improbable that Turk howled in the house at night, partly because he
wanted to get out of it, I stationed him in his kennel outside, but
unchained; and I seriously warned the village that any man who came
in his way must not expect to leave him without a rip in his own
throat. I then casually asked Ikey if he were a judge of a gun? On
his saying, "Yes, sir, I knows a good gun when I sees her," I begged