"your ghosts are very rude unsociable folks"

And there is nothing I hate more than a ghost with no manners.

So the manservant (Albert) and the lady (Mathilda) hightail it for the castle where they are admitted by the old, married caretakers there (Joseph and Bertha) and told they can stay there as long as they like. But they should probably sleep downstairs, because, as Bertha explains, "Nobody will sleep in the rooms up stairs; the gentlefolks who were in it last could not rest, such strange noises and groans, and screams, and such like terrible things are heard..." Fortunately, "the ghosts never come down stairs," which Bertha has a great theory for. "They were some of your high gentry, I warrant, who never went into kitchens."

But Mathilda won't sleep below stairs because ghosts are preferable to sleeping in servants' quarters.

This?














Or this?

I'm with Mathilda on this one. Bring on the ghosts.

Who do show up. Albert, not wanting to be less than a coward than his lady, also decides to sleep upstairs and doesn't sleep at all because, "chains were rattling, ghosts roaring and groaning doors banging with violence enough to shake the foundation of the walls...." The next morning Albert determines he will never sleep upstairs again. He is a servant and is not too good for small rooms and bare floors.

Mathilda on the other hand...

...figures that Albert and the caretakers are freaked out by ghosts because they are getting on in years. "...she was not surprised that the weak minds of the old people should be terrified, or that Albert, who was likewise far advanced in years, above sixty, should shrink from alarms which had given her a momentary terror...."

She decides there has to be something behind this and decides to go exploring. Because every heroine should go exploring in the creepy castle.

I admit, I would too.