The Haunted dell
B ut Carmen, my daddy wouldn’t make me a doll house with a ghost in it!” Yvie sounded indignant as she faced the little girl from next door. Kneeling, the two perplexed play mates, one with blonde braids and freckles on her nose, and the other with black eyes and hair, stared at the house. Something was haunting its five rooms; they were sure of it. Such a sweet doll house, too; with its picture window, spacious rooms and gable roof, you’d never guess it had once been a respectable packing crate. Morning after morning Yvie found everything upside down. Now there was papa-doll, over by the grand piano where she was sure she had left him sitting in the armchair read ing the paper! And the mother, in stead of standing by the ironing board with the cunning miniature iron and the dress spread out ready to press, was by the bathinette, pre tending to bathe the baby. It was just too confusing and rather scary! “Come, I’ll show you something!” Carmen pulled Yvie to her feet and they ran down the dusty path to Carmen’s one-room adobe, thatched- roof house. Inside it was cool and dark and four chickens were scratch ing in the mud floor. “Over here,” Carmen said. “Look!” Yvie, her heart pounding, gazed up at the little shelf above the mud bench-bed. It was a typical Bolivian country family altar; on it were flowers in a bottle, a stubby candle and a picture that was smudged and wrinkled. “We light the candle and say prayers,” Carmen proudly informed her. “Then the saints protect us— like the time Grandpa’s soul came back to trouble us!” “But my daddy says that only Jesus can drive the evil spirts away,” Yvie said, doubtfully. That afternoon, Mommy wondered
fast asleep in his crib. Yvie had only her guilty conscience to keep her company. She kept remembering how the candle and flowers looked in the bed room of the doll house, and suddenly she raised up on one arm and looked over at the house. She blinked in surprise. For a minute Yvie really thought the candle was alight, but then she laughed delightedly. “ It’s the ‘phosph’escent’ lamp Dick gave me! He said •it would shine after dark—but I never stayed awake long enough before to find out!” It was easy to imagine the small candle burning, and Yvie thought, “Why, it’s just like Carmen’s house nqw . . . the kind of house where people who don’t love Jesus live. That’s the kind of people we pray for every morning after breakfast! Oh my, this isn’t right!” In a jiffy Yvie hopped out of bed and groped her way over to the house, reached in and removed the small objects, put the little table back in the hall where it belonged. She felt so relieved she started to cry. “ I hope I’m never that silly again,” she whispered. As she knelt to ask the Lord to forgive her—for she wasn’t too small to know that she had done something displeasing to Him—she had an idea. An idea that took her breath away. I’ll just ask Him to help me catch the what-ever-it-is, myself! And she wished, with all her heart, that the ghost would be a little one. But sitting up in the dark would be far more pleasant with Kitty on her lap. She opened the door, call ing softly, so as not to disturb Mom my’s meeting with the Indians in the front room. In Kitty bounded, his long green eyes seeming to say, “Why, this is nice.” You know I’m never allowed in the bedroom!” The living room did appear quite
why her smallest daughter wanted a birthday candle—perhaps one of her dollies was having a birthday? “Any color Mommy,” Yvie told her. “One of the teensy ones.” There were no flowers in the dried- up garden, but growing along the rock wall were weeds with tiny golden blossoms. They looked quite nice, Yvie thought, guiltily, as she placed them on a small table in the bedroom of the doll house, with the pink candle beside them. The only thing missing was a picture. Her heart was heavy, as she sat on her heels and surveyed her little saint-shelf, for she had heard her father preach often on the sin of idols. Like a chubby statue she hunched there, fragments of a Bible verse going through her mind. She couldn’t remember the words exactly, but, as nearly as she could recall, they went like this: “ Idols have eyes, but they can’t see at all; they’ve got ears but they don’t hear any thing; they can’t- smell with their noses and they never say any words with ther mouths—and everyone that makes them is just THE KING'S BUSINESS 30
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