Told After Supper | Page 8

poor to marry the girl, so he kissed her good-bye, told
her he would soon be back, and went off to Australia to make his
fortune.
But Australia was not then what it became later on. Travellers through
the bush were few and far between in those early days; and, even when
one was caught, the portable property found upon the body was often of
hardly sufficiently negotiable value to pay the simple funeral expenses
rendered necessary. So that it took Johnson nearly twenty years to
make his fortune.
The self-imposed task was accomplished at last, however, and then,
having successfully eluded the police, and got clear out of the Colony,
he returned to England, full of hope and joy, to claim his bride.
He reached the house to find it silent and deserted. All that the
neighbours could tell him was that, soon after his own departure, the
family had, on one foggy night, unostentatiously disappeared, and that
nobody had ever seen or heard anything of them since, although the
landlord and most of the local tradesmen had made searching inquiries.
Poor Johnson, frenzied with grief, sought his lost love all over the
world. But he never found her, and, after years of fruitless effort, he
returned to end his lonely life in the very house where, in the happy
bygone days, he and his beloved Emily had passed so many blissful
hours.
He had lived there quite alone, wandering about the empty rooms,
weeping and calling to his Emily to come back to him; and when the
poor old fellow died, his ghost still kept the business on.
It was there, the Pater said, when he took the house, and the agent had
knocked ten pounds a year off the rent in consequence.
After that, I was continually meeting Johnson about the place at all
times of the night, and so, indeed, were we all. We used to walk round
it and stand aside to let it pass, at first; but, when we grew at home with
it, and there seemed no necessity for so much ceremony, we used to
walk straight through it. You could not say it was ever much in the

way.
It was a gentle, harmless, old ghost, too, and we all felt very sorry for it,
and pitied it. The women folk, indeed, made quite a pet of it, for a
while. Its faithfulness touched them so.
But as time went on, it grew to be a bit a bore. You see it was full of
sadness. There was nothing cheerful or genial about it. You felt sorry
for it, but it irritated you. It would sit on the stairs and cry for hours at a
stretch; and, whenever we woke up in the night, one was sure to hear it
pottering about the passages and in and out of the different rooms,
moaning and sighing, so that we could not get to sleep again very easily.
And when we had a party on, it would come and sit outside the
drawing-room door, and sob all the time. It did not do anybody any
harm exactly, but it cast a gloom over the whole affair.
"Oh, I'm getting sick of this old fool," said the Pater, one evening (the
Dad can be very blunt, when he is put out, as you know), after Johnson
had been more of a nuisance than usual, and had spoiled a good game
of whist, by sitting up the chimney and groaning, till nobody knew
what were trumps or what suit had been led, even. "We shall have to
get rid of him, somehow or other. I wish I knew how to do it."
"Well," said the Mater, "depend upon it, you'll never see the last of him
until he's found Emily's grave. That's what he is after. You find Emily's
grave, and put him on to that, and he'll stop there. That's the only thing
to do. You mark my words."
The idea seemed reasonable, but the difficulty in the way was that we
none of us knew where Emily's grave was any more than the ghost of
Johnson himself did. The Governor suggested palming off some other
Emily's grave upon the poor thing, but, as luck would have it, there did
not seem to have been an Emily of any sort buried anywhere for miles
round. I never came across a neighbourhood so utterly destitute of dead
Emilies.
I thought for a bit, and then I hazarded a suggestion myself.
"Couldn't we fake up something for the old chap?" I queried. "He
seems a simple-minded old sort. He might take it in. Anyhow, we could
but try."
"By Jove, so we will," exclaimed my father; and the very next morning
we had the workmen in, and fixed