Chapter 4 of 28 · 2'11"
The room is unnaturally cold after a warm day, and Rick says he suddenly felt completely flattened. The talk turns to why the commander dropped his price: "rumors like that are dynamite if you're selling a place." Pamela swears the ghost stories do not scare her, then invents a whole life for the girl outside.
The Rumors That Lowered the Price
Pamela's Story About the Girl
While settling into the house, Rick and Pamela find one room strangely cold for such a warm day, and Rick admits he suddenly felt completely flattened. They wonder why Commander Beech dropped his price so sharply, and answer it themselves with the ghost rumors. Pamela insists she is not afraid of any of it, then starts building a story around the girl standing outside.
The chill is the first thing that cannot be explained away. Rick and Pamela came to a house they got cheaply, and the bargain is the clue: when they ask why the commander cut his price, they answer it themselves — "The disturbances. Rumors like that are dynamite if you're selling a place." Their banter is a way of keeping the subject light, and Pamela's line about the girl outside, "She's an ill-mannered little dog in the manger," is less about the girl than about her own wish to live here. Both of them joke about not being afraid, but the room is cold, the dog is uneasy, and the story of the house has already started telling itself. What they call a rumor is turning into a tenant.
A1–C2 is the CEFR scale. Cards above the level you pick fade, and playback will not auto-pause on them.
“Me? No, disturbances wouldn't disturb me, not for a single second.”
It bounces the word disturbances back at itself, which is exactly how a bluff sounds.
Informal
“She's an ill-mannered little dog in the manger.”
The manger image captures someone spoiling things for others out of pure spite.
Informal
“The disturbances. Rumors like that are dynamite if you're selling a place.”
Calling a rumor dynamite explains the price cut better than any argument could.
Informal
“It's funny it should strike so cold in here after such a warm day.”
A weather-like aside plants unease; the everyday tone makes the chill feel real.
Neutral
Up next · 05talk me out ofThe scene: The Tobacconist Gossips About WindwardIt is the first sign of the haunting. After a warm day the room strikes unnaturally cold, and Rick feels it physically, saying he suddenly felt completely flattened. The cold is what makes them start taking the ghost talk seriously.
Because of the disturbances. As one of them puts it, rumors like that are dynamite if you are selling a place, so the strange events explain the bargain the Fitzgeralds got.
She says she does not really believe in them and insists she would be interested rather than scared. Even so, she is the one who spins the girl outside into a story, which the others tease her about.
She appears to be the old man's granddaughter, Stella Meredith. Pamela thinks she had been crying and that she loved the house, though the others tell Pamela to stop making up stories.
It comes from Aesop: a dog that will not let the ox eat hay it cannot eat itself. Applied to the girl, it means she is not living in the house but still refuses to let anyone else have it.
