Cecilia de Noël | Page 7

but you will always talk just as if it was of no consequence."
"I don't talk of the cook's going as being of no consequence. Far from it. But you must not let her go, that is all."
"How can I prevent her going? I think you had better talk to her yourself."
"I should like to meet her very much; would not you, Lindy? I should like to hear her story; it must be a blood-curdling one, to judge from its effect upon Ann. The only person I have yet met who pretended to have seen the ghost was Aunt Eleanour."
"And what was it like, daddy?" asked Denis, much interested.
"She did not say, Den. She would never tell me anything about it."
"Would she tell me?"
"I am afraid not. I don't think she would tell any one, except perhaps Mr. Lyndsay. He has a way of worming things out of people."
"Mr. Lyndsay, how do you worm things out of people?"
"I don't know, Denis; you must ask your father."
"First, by never asking any questions," said Atherley promptly; "and then by a curious way he has of looking as if he was listening attentively to what was said to him, instead of thinking, as most people do, what he shall say himself when he gets a chance of putting a word in."
"But how could Aunt Eleanour see the ghost when there is not any such thing?" cried Harold.
"How indeed!" said his father, rising; "that is just the puzzle. It will take you years to find it out. Lindy, look into the morning-room in about half an hour, and you will hear a tale whose lightest word will harrow up thy soul, etc., etc."
As Lady Atherley kindly seconded this invitation I accepted it, though not with the consequences predicted. Anything less suggestive of the supernatural, or in every way less like the typical ghost-seer, was surely never produced than the round and rubicund little person I found in conversation with the Atherleys. Mrs. Mallet was a brunette who might once have considered herself a beauty, to judge by the self-conscious and self-satisfied simper which the ghastliest recollections were unable to banish. As I entered I caught only the last words of Atherley's speech--
"---- treating you well, Mrs. Mallet?"
"Oh no, Sir George," answered Mrs. Mallet, standing very straight and stiff, with two plump red hands folded demurely before her; "which I have not a word to say against any one, but have met, ever since I come here, with the greatest of kindness and respect. But the noises, sir, the noises of a night is more than I can abear."
"Oh, they are only rats, Mrs. Mallet."
"No rats in this world ever made sech a noise, Sir George; which the very first night as I slep here, there come the most mysterioustest sounds as ever I hear, which I says to Hann, 'Whatever are you a-doing?' which she woke up all of a suddent, as young people will, and said she never hear nor yet see nothing."
"What was the noise like, Mrs. Mallet?"
"Well, Sir George, I can only compare it to the dragging of heavy furniture, which I really thought at first it was her ladyship a-coming upstairs to waken me, took bad with burglars or a fire."
"But, Mrs. Mallet, I am sure you are too brave a woman to mind a little noise."
"It is not only noises, Sir George. Last night--"
Mrs. Mallet drew a long breath and closed her eyes.
"Yes, Mrs. Mallet, pray go on; I am very curious to hear what did happen last night."
"It makes the cold chills run over me to think of it. We was all gone to bed--leastways the maids and me, and Hann and me was but just got to my room when says she to me, 'Oh la! whatever do you think?' says she; 'I promised Ellen when she went out this afternoon as I would shut the windows in the pink bedroom at four o'clock, and never come to think of it till this minute,' she says. 'Oh dear,' I says, 'and them new chintzes will be entirely ruined with the damp. Why, what a good-for-nothing girl you are!' I says, 'and what you thinks on half your time is more than I can tell.' 'Whatever shall I do?' she says, 'for go along there at this time of night all by myself I dare not,' says she. 'Well,' I says, 'rather than you should go alone, I'll go along with you,' I says, 'for stay here by myself I would not,' I says, 'not if any one was to pay me hundreds.' So we went down our stairs and along our passage to the door which you go into the gallery, Hann a-clutching hold of me and starting, which when we come into the gallery I was all