Part 23 (2/2)
”I want a word with you,” she said. ”It's high time you stopped this ridiculous nonsense. I don't know who started it, but it's getting the limit. Oh, yes! I know you go creeping into Tattie's bed when you think I'm asleep, and you daren't walk upstairs alone. I'm not as blind or deaf as you seem to suppose. You're putting silly ideas into juniors'
heads. Whoever heard of the Abbey being haunted? Such stuff! You'll be afraid of your own shadows next. Do try to be more strong-minded! I really shouldn't have expected----”
Geraldine stopped, because something like a whirlwind suddenly descended the stairs and stampeded towards them. It resolved itself into Diana--Diana with scarlet cheeks, s.h.i.+ning eyes, and face simply bubbling over with excitement.
”Hallo! I say!” she jodelled, ”What _do_ you think?” Then she saw Geraldine, and halted dead.
”Come here!” commanded the head girl. ”I want to talk to you too about this absurd spook scare. It's mostly among you intermediates, and the sooner you get it out of your silly heads the better. Pity you can't find something more sensible to talk about. Why don't you read, and fill up your empty brains? There are heaps of good books in the library, if you'd only get them out. You spend all your spare time gossiping.”
”We _do_ read!” retorted Diana, taking up the cudgels for the maligned intermediates. ”I've just read _The Monastery_, and that's all about a ghost called 'The White Lady of Avenel'. It's _grand_ where she rides the sacristan's mule down the river and sings:
'Merrily swim we; the moon s.h.i.+nes bright.
Good luck to your fis.h.i.+ng! Whom watch ye to-night?'
There are heaps and loads of ghost tales in the guide book and in Chadwick's _Northern Antiquities_, and those are all books Miss Todd _told_ me I might read. She said they were 'educational'.”
”She didn't mean you to take the ghosts seriously, though, any more than you'd believe in the G.o.ds of Greece because you were learning cla.s.sical literature. Why, you'll tell me next that you expect to see the fairies.”
”I'm not sure that I don't!”
”Then you're a bigger goose than I thought you. Really, at fourteen! I'm astonished at all of you. You don't see _me_ running squealing away from supposed ghosts. Don't let me catch you being such little idiots again.”
Having finished her harangue, and having, as she thought, thoroughly squashed the folly of the intermediates, Geraldine proceeded on her way, happily oblivious of the faces they were pulling behind her back.
”I'd like to see _her_ squeal and run,” grunted Jess.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ITS COWL FELL BACK, AND DISCLOSED A WELL-KNOWN AND DECIDEDLY MIRTHFUL COUNTENANCE]
”So should I,” agreed Sadie. ”She's always _very_ superior. By the by, Stars and Stripes, what were you just going to tell us?”
”Nothing particular.”
Diana was looking preoccupied, as if her thoughts were far away.
”I'm sure it was,” urged Sadie. ”Don't be mean! Go on!”
”I've changed my mind. No, I'm _not_ going to tell you. It's no use bothering me, for I just shan't.”
”I think everybody's horrid to-night,” said Sadie, turning away much offended.
It was on the very next evening that Ida Beckford, going to her bedroom in the gloaming, caught a glimpse of a white-robed figure with a cowl over its head gliding along the pa.s.sage and up the stairs. Ida was not so strong-minded as Geraldine. She turned the colour of pale putty, and went straight downstairs again to relate her psychic experience to her fellow seniors. She did not meet with the sympathy she expected.
”Some silly trick of those intermediates,” sniffed Hilary.
”I'll be down on them if they go shamming spooks,” threatened Geraldine.
”If it happens again we'll set a watch and catch it,” declared Stuart loftily.
Ida cheered up at this mundane view of the matter, and recovered her colour; but she abandoned the blotter she was going to fetch, and stayed in her form-room instead of walking upstairs again. The news began to creep about the school, however, that the Abbey was being haunted by a spiritual visitor. Many of the girls saw it glide along the landing in the dusk, and disappear up a certain narrow flight of stairs. Now herein lay the mystery. The stairs went up ten steps in full view of the pa.s.sage, then they turned a sharp corner, rounded a yard of landing, and with four more steps ended in a locked attic door. Several of the most venturesome members of the school had tried to follow the figure, but when they came round the corner, to their immense surprise it had utterly disappeared. And there was absolutely no place in which it could possibly have concealed itself.
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