He sits there puffing, thinking first of Billy, then of Glory, and lastly of “the Squire’s” ghostly experiences.
“Spot,” he calls presently to the fox-terrier, who was sitting near him, in the flood of light that streams forth from the hall door, when he first lighted his cigar. “Spot, I wonder how you’d behave, if you saw a ghost?”
Spot, however, instead of prancing up to be petted, as he usually does when strangers take any notice of him, pays no attention to Claude’s remark. So the smoker lazily turns his head round to see if the dog is still there. There stands Spot, having been apparently disturbed by something, looking down towards the dark end of the verandah, with his knowing little head cocked on one side.
“I wonder what he sees,” thinks Claude; “the cat, I suppose.” But turning his eyes in the direction of the dog’s inquiring gaze, the young man becomes grimly aware of the fact that he and the dog are not alone upon the shadowy portico. Seated in one of the great cane-chairs, his widely opening eyes descry a dimly visible figure. It remains silent and motionless.
Claude has studied Professor Huxley’s “Physiology,” and remembers the celebrated case of the plucky “Mrs. A.” and her spectral annoyances. But notwithstanding all this, on seeing the unexpected apparition near him, the young man exhibits one of those interesting automatic actions, attributable to what scientists, we believe, call “spontaneous activity,”—in other words, sits up with a start.
But before Angland has time to investigate matters, or even indulge, were he so minded, in any of those eye-ball-pressing experiments recommended by dry fact physiologists to all wraith-pestered persons, Spot had taken the initiative, and with perfect success.
He runs forward, wagging his tail, and jumps up against the chair in which is seated the mysterious figure.
“Oh my!” exclaims a musical girl’s voice, the tones of which make Claude’s heart beat as blithely as an excursion steamer’s paddle-wheel.
“Wherever——Oh! Spot, is that you? Why, you quite frightened me, I declare.”
Then the sound of a dear little yawn is heard in the darkness, and soon afterwards Miss Glory Giles makes her appearance, and on seeing Claude motions to him to be quiet and refrain from speaking.