Some were disposed to like her, others eyed her askance, and old Polly Pepper, the black cook, who had been in the family ever since Mr.Hamilton's first marriage, returned her salutation rather gruffly, and then, stalking back to the kitchen, muttered to, those who followed her, "I don't like her face nohow; she looks just like the milk snakes, when they stick their heads in at the door." "But you knew how she looked before," said Lucy, the chambermaid.
"I know it," returned Polly; "but when she was here nussin' I never noticed _her_, more I would any on you; for who'd of thought that Mr.
Hamilton would marry her, when he knows, or or'to know, that nusses ain't fust cut, nohow; and you may depend on't, things ain't a-goin' to be here as they used to be." Here Rachel started up, and related the circumstance of Margaret's refusing to see "that little evil-eyed-lookin-varmint, with curls almost like Polly's." Lucy, too, suddenly remembered something which she had seen, or heard, or made up--so that Mrs.Carter had not been an hour in the coveted homestead ere there was mutiny against her afloat in the kitchen; "But," said Aunt Polly, "I 'vises you all to be civil till she sasses you fust!" "My dear, what room can Lenora have for her own ?" asked Mrs.Hamilton, as we must now call her, the morning following her marriage.
"Why, really, I don't know," answered the husband; "you must suit yourselves with regard to that." "Yes; but I'd rather you'd select, and then no one can blame me," was the answer.
"Choose any room you please, except the one which Mag and Carrie now occupy, and rest assured you shall not be blamed," said Mr.Hamilton.
The night before Lenora had appropriated to herself the best chamber, but the room was so large and so far distant from any one, and the windows and fireboard rattled so, that she felt afraid, and did not care to repeat her experiment.
"I 'clar for't!" said Polly, when she heard of it.

"Gone right into the best bed, where even Miss Margaret never goes! What are we all comin' to?
Tell her, Luce, the story of the ghosts, and I'll be bound she'll make herself scarce in them rooms!" "Tell her yourself," said Lucy; and when, after breakfast, Lenora, anxious to spy out everything, appeared in the kitchen, Aunt Polly called out, "Did you hear anything last night, Miss Lenora ?" "Why, yes--I heard the windows rattle," was the answer; and Aunt Polly, with an ominous shake of the head, continued: "There's more than windows rattle, I guess.

Didn't you see nothin', all white and corpse-like, go a-whizzin, and rappin' by your bed ?" "Why, no," said Lenora; "what do you mean ?" So Polly told her of the ghosts and goblins which nightly ranged the two chambers over the front and back parlors.

Lenora said nothing, but she secretly resolved not to venture again after dark into the haunted portion of the house.

But where should she sleep?
That was now the important question.