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clatter and ran from the room.
    She stood with her back against the closed door of her bedroom until her quivering rage had subsided. Then she sat down at the desk in a cold calm, took out a sheet of the monogrammed paper her grandmother had given her at Christmas, and wrote Aunt Millicent a letter.
    Dear Aunt Millicent
,
I’m sure you didn’t realize when you sent me here that the Henrys are all mad. Their house is falling apart. It’s dirty. And they see ghosts. I want to come back to New York. I will go to school. I will go to an orphanage if you wish. I will go any place but here.
    Your affectionate niece
,
Rose Larkin
    She looked up to reach for an envelope and there was Mrs. Morrissay coming toward her through the wall from the twins’ room.

The Root Cellar
    “M rs. Morrissay!” A shudder like an electric shock ran through Rose. “What are you doing?” she whispered.
    Mrs. Morrissay said nothing. She didn’t move. She stood half in the twins’ room, half in Rose’s, a blue and orange kerchief tied around her head, a dust mop in her hand, looking very ill at ease.
    Rose was trembling. Her hands were wet with cold sweat and she could hardly focus her eyes. Mrs. Morrissay came the rest of the way through the wall and into the room. She was no longer half visible. She was solid, three dimensional.
    “You’re Sam’s ghost.” Rose heard her own voice, strange and shrill and accusing.
    “I ain’t no ghost.” Mrs. Morrissay was indignant. “I’m just plain myself, minding my own business and it happens.”
    “Happens?”
    “I shift!”
    “Shift?”
    “Shift. I’m going along minding my own business like I said, hoeing or scrubbing or mopping, and right in the middle I shift. And you needn’t be so cross, Rose. You ought to know better. It’s not easy for a body to shift. I’m in my kitchen, then quick’s a cow’s tail after a fly, I’m in yours—or your bedroom.” She looked around her. “Oh, Rose, ain’t this an awful sight? It was so pretty.” She went over to the corner by the window and picked at the layers of wallpaper. “See, this here’s the one I put up. It was white with pink roses.” Suddenly she smiled at Rose, a warm, embracing smile. Then she looked out the window.
    “Ain’t it something how them bushes is all grown over? Funny how you can still see where the old garden was.”
    “Mrs. Morrissay, you have no right to be here!” Rose could barely control her shaking voice. Her sense of how things ought to be had never been so disturbed, not even by her grandmother’s death. “You don’t belong here, Mrs. Morrissay—” Rose stopped abruptly, her fear and her shock subsiding before Mrs. Morrissay’s smile. “I suppose it
is
your home?”
    “Of course it’s my house. I grew up in it. I was married in it. I’m like to die in it and”—Mrs.Morrissay finished with a sigh—“it seems I shift in it.”
    She reached over and took Rose’s hand. Rose snatched it away. “It’s all right,” said Mrs. Morrissay soothingly. “Rose, I told you, I ain’t no ghost. I ain’t dead. I’m just shifted, and I don’t know how no more than you do. It just happens, like I said. All I know is that if the good Lord sees fit to shift me, I shift. I suppose it’s … well, I dunno. But I do belong here, and, Rose, I want you to make things right in my house for me.”
    “Mrs. Morrissay, I can’t fix your house. It isn’t my house, and anyway, I don’t even like this house. I’m not going to stay here. I’m going back to New York.”
    Rose realized that she was actually talking to the old woman as easily as she had used her name, Mrs. Morrissay. “How do you know so much about me? Who are you?”
    But Mrs. Morrissay was staring at Rose. As if she hadn’t heard her question, she said, “Don’t talk about going off like that, Rose. You ain’t going to New York, you know you ain’t—oh!” Mrs. Morrissay looked at Rose in alarm, opened her mouth to say something, and