Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/506

 498 certain it was, that there was no lack of volunteers now. A good round dozen started, filling up the Plough-and-Harrow bar, as Mrs. Bascroft dealt out her treat with no niggard hand.

“What’s a-doing now?” asked Bascroft, a stupid-looking man with red hair combed straight down his forehead, and coloured shirt sleeves, surveying the inroad on his premises with surprise.

“Never you mind,” sharply reproved his better half. “These ladies is my visitors, and if I choose to stand treat round, what’s that to you? You takes your share o’ liquor, Bascroft.”

Bascroft was not held in very great estimation by the ladies generally, and they turned their backs upon him.

“We are a-going out to see the ghost, if you must know, Bascroft,” said Susan Peckaby, who made one of the volunteers.

Bascroft stared.

“What a set of idiots you must be!” grunted he. “Mr. Jan says as Dan Duff see nothing but a white cow: he telled me so hisself. Be you a-thinking to meet that there other white animal on your road, Mrs. Peckaby?”

“Perhaps I am,” tartly returned Mrs. Peckaby.

“One ’ud think so. You can’t want to go out to meet ghostesses; you be a going out to your saints at New Jerusalem. I’d whack that there donkey for being so slow, when he did come, if I was you.”

Hastening away from Bascroft and his aggravating tongue, the expedition, having drained their tumblers, filed out. Down by the pound—relieved now of its caged inmate—went they, on towards the willow pond. The tumblers had made them brave. The night was light, as the preceding one had been: the ground looked white, as if with frost, and the air was cold. The pond in view, they halted, and took a furtive glance, beginning to feel somewhat chill. So far as these half glances allowed them to judge, there appeared to be nothing near to it, nothing upon its brink.

“It’s of no good marching right up to it,” said Mrs. Jones, the baker’s wife. “The ghost mightn’t come at all, if it saw all us there. Let’s get inside the trees.”

Mrs. Jones meant inside the grove of trees. The proposition was most acceptable, and they took up their position, the pond in view, peeping out, and conversing in a whisper. By and by they heard the church clock strike eight.

“I wish it ’ud make haste,” exclaimed Susan Peckaby, with some impatience. “I don’t never like to be away from home long together, for fear of that there blessed white animal arriving.”

“He’d wait, wouldn’t he?” sarcastically rejoined Polly Dawson. “He’d—”

A prolonged hush—sh—sh! from the rest restored silence. Something was rustling the trees at a distance. They huddled closer together, and caught hold one of another.

Nothing appeared. The alarm went off. And they waited, without result, until the clock struck nine. The artificial strength within them had cooled by that time, their ardour had cooled, and they were feeling chill and tired. Susan Peckaby was upon thorns, she said, and urged their departure.

“You can go if you like,” was the answer. “Nobody wants to keep you.”

Susan Peckaby measured the distance between the pond and the way she had to go, and came to the determination to risk it.

“I’ll make a rush for it, I think,” said she. “I shan’t see nothing. For all I know, that quadruple may be right afore our door now. If he—”

Susan Peckaby stopped, her voice subsiding into a shriek. She, and those with her, became simultaneously aware that some white figure was bearing down upon them. The shrieks grew awful.

It proved to be Roy in his white fustian jacket. Roy had never had the privilege of hearing a dozen women shriek in concert before, at least, like this. His loud derisive laugh was excessively aggravating. What with that, what with the fright his appearance had really put them in, they all tore off, leaving some hard words for him; and never stopped to take breath until they burst into the shop of Mrs. Duff.

It was rather an ignominious way of returning, and Mrs. Duff did not spare her comments. If she had went out to meet the ghost, she’d ha’ stopped till the ghost came, she would! Mrs. Jones rejoined that them watched-for ghosts, as she had heered, never did come—which she had said so afore they went out!

Master Dan, considerably recovered, was down then. Rather pale and shaky, and accommodated with a chair and pillow, in front of the kitchen fire. The expedition pressed into the kitchen, and five hundred questions were lavished upon the boy.

“What was it dressed in, Dan? Did you get a good sight of her face, Dan? Did it look just as Rachel’s used to look? Speak up, Dan.”

“It warn’t Rachel at all,” replied Dan.

This unexpected assertion brought a pause of discomfiture. “He’s head ain’t right yet,” observed Mrs. Duff, apologetically: “and that’s why I’ve not asked him nothing.”

“Yes, it is right, mother,” said Dan. “I never see Rachel last night. I never said as I did.”

Another pause: spent in contemplating Dan. “I knowed a case like this, once afore,” observed old Miss Till, who carried round the milk to Deerham. “A boy got a fright, and they couldn’t bring him to at all. Epsum salts did it at last. Three pints of ’em they give, I think it was, and that brought his mind round.”

“It’s a good remedy,” acquiesced Mrs. Jones. “There’s nothing like plenty of Epsum salts for boys. I’d try ’em on him, Mother Duff.”

“Dan, dear,” said Susan Peckaby, insinuatingly,—for she had come in along with the rest, ignoring for the moment what might be waiting at her door,—“was it in the pound as you saw Rachel’s ghost?”

’Twarn’t Rachel’s ghost as I did see,” persisted Dan.

“Tell us whose it was, then?” asked she, humouring him.

The boy answered. But he answered below his breath; as if he scarcely dared to speak the name aloud. His mother partially caught it.