The Canterville Ghost

He thought of the Dowager Duchess, whom he had frightened senseless while she stood in front of the mirror in her lace and diamonds; of the four housemaids, who had gone off into hysterics just because he had grinned at them through the curtains of one of the spare bedrooms. Of the local churchman, whose candle he had blown out as he was coming from the librarylate one night. That man had needed to be cared for by the doctor ever since, as he suffered terribly from nerves.

And old Madame de Tremouillac, who woke up early one morning and saw a skeleton seated in an armchair by the fire reading her diary. She needed to stay in her bed for six weeks with an attack of brain fever. When she got better, she started going to church again and stopped speaking to her friend the notorious sceptic Monsieur de Voltaire.

The ghost remembered the terrible night when the wicked Lord Canterville was found choking in his dressing-room. There was a playing card half-way down his throat, and Lord Canterville confessed, just before he died, that he had cheated the famous politician Charles James Fox, and won £50,000 with that playing card. The wicked lord swore that the ghost had made him swallow the same card that he had cheated with.

Vocabulary:

Dowager: The wife of a dead aristocrat.
Lace: elegant and expensive clothing.
Hysterics: To be too upset to think properly.
Grin: A smile that shows teeth.
Nerves: He was easily upset or frightened.
Skeleton: Bones with nothing covering them.
Diary: A book where you write what you have done each day.
Fever: A kind of illness.
Notorious: Famous for something bad.
Sceptic: Someone who does not really believe anything.
Wicked: Bad, evil.
Choke: When you can't breathe because your throat is blocked.
Playing card: A piece of stiff paper used for some games.
Confess: To say you have done something bad.
Cheat: To try to win a game by breaking the rules.
Swear: To promise that something is true