The White Lady by Grace Livingston Hill

the slats of a picture crate and discovering two large lazy cows grazing on a meadow bank. “It was noice av the man to brang thot. We can’t ate it, nor slape in it, but we moight milk the cows.”
    Constance sat down on a packing box and laughed until she cried. There were phases about this new life that were refreshing. She could not remember laughing like that since she was a little girl in school. There was a pleasant comradeship in these two, this uncultured girl and wild little boy, that made her forget all she had left behind her. With that laugh, she seemed to drop her old life and throw herself with zest into the new one.
    The load was not all painted cows. There was a kitchen table and a box of sheets, a barrel of dishes, a leather couch, three or four chairs, and a mattress.
    Norah scrubbed and kept up a stream of Irish wit, and Jimmy was everywhere, with eyes and hands and feet alert. Constance sat down upon the leather couch, which Norah had elected should be her bed for that night, and which was placed in the center of an island of cleanliness where she had scrubbed carefully. A piece of carpet that Constance recognized as belonging to the back upper hall in the old home was spread out in front of the couch, and a chair was drawn conveniently near for a dressing table. It was all exceedingly primitive and inconvenient, and the girl wondered, as she looked upon it, why she felt such intense satisfaction in it all when it was so marked a contrast to her old luxurious room with its elegant appointments.
    She unpacked her little handbag, laid brushes and combs upon the chair, threw her bathrobe over the back of it, then lay back for one moment upon the couch and closed her eyes. She felt thankful to somebody or something, she did not quite know what.
    Then she bestirred herself once more. There must be a carpenter brought to fix the window so it would lock. Jimmy must get one. She went downstairs to call him and to tell Norah to bring her own mattress, upon which she was to sleep, up into her room, so that they might be company for each other. Everything seemed to be going delightfully. Jimmy ran off for the carpenter, and Constance opened a trunk that had just been brought from the station. She was searching for one or two things that she wanted to use, and in doing so came across a little white dress, an old one, but a favorite of hers, a soft white flannel, simply made. It struck her that it would be a relief to get off her traveling dress and get into this. If she had had more practical training, a white flannel would hardly have seemed to her the correct thing to don on the night of her arrival in an old dusty house that called for much work. But to her, used to dressing for dinner, the little white flannel was as plain as plain could be. So, hastily pulling it out, she put it on and went down to spread out the remainder of the contents of the lunch box.
    Norah smiled when she entered the kitchen, where everything was now in good order. This was not saying much, for there was very little to put in order; but the room itself was clean. So were the table and the old range, though lack of stove polish sorely tried Norah’s sense of the fitness of things. She had unearthed a pan and a teakettle and was attacking the barrel of dishes when Constance came in. Norah laid down the hatchet and clapped her hands with pleasure.
    “That’s just right, Miss Connie; ye dressed up fer dinner, now, didn’t ye? We’ll soon be in order, my dear, so don’t yez worry. Och, but ye looks swate in thet little white dress!”
    Jimmy appeared at the back door at that moment with a carpenter in his wake but stopped short when he saw Constance, and for a moment his eyes bulged with terror. He almost turned to flee away. He thought the white lady had appeared at last and was about to vent her wrath upon him at the goings on that he had been instigating.
    But the new flannel ghost smiled so sweetly at him and said pleasantly, “Oh