Cecilia de Noël | Page 7

"Probably. We had better send for Doctor What's-his-name."
"The usual doctor is away," said Lady Atherley. "There is a London
doctor in his place. He is clever, Lady Sylvia said, but he gives himself
airs."
"Never mind what he gives himself if he gives his patients the right
thing."
"And after all we can manage very well without Ann, but what are we
to do about Mrs. Mallet? I always told you how it would be."
"But, my dear, it is not my fault. You look as reproachfully at me as if
it were my ghost which was causing all this disturbance instead of the
ghost of a remote ancestor--predecessor, in fact."
"No, 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