“It may be rather difficult to regulate one’s movements, once one is out of the body,” returned Veronica guardedly.
Barbara did not crave for spiritual excursions, and secretly preferred the old days, when her chum talked tennis instead of psychology; but the occult was paramount, and she was obliged to follow the fashion. The atmosphere of the Grange was certainly conducive to superstition. The dim passages and panelled walls looked haunted. Every accessory of the old mansion seemed a suitable background for a ghost. The juniors were frankly 80 frightened. They did not dare to go upstairs alone. They imagined skeleton fingers clutching their legs through the banisters, or bodiless heads rolling like billiard balls along the landings. Having listened, awestruck, to Veronica’s accounts of a séance, they were apprehensive lest the tables should turn sportive and caper about the rooms rapping out spirit messages, or boisterous elementals should bump the beds up and down and fling the china about.
“That only happens if there’s a powerful medium in the house,” Veronica had assured them, and the girls devoutly hoped that none of their number possessed the required mystic properties.
“Look here,” said Raymonde one day to Ardiune, “I’m getting rather fed up with this spook business.”
“So’m I,” agreed Ardiune. “I thought it was fun at first, but it’s got beyond the limit now. The sillies can talk of nothing else. I’m sick of sitting on Veronica’s bed and hearing about mediums and messages. I’d like a potato race for a change. I vote we get up some progressive games.”
“It would be more jinky! I fancy a good many are tired of ghosts, only they don’t like to say so. Ardiune! I’ve got an idea! While the school’s still mad on these things, why shouldn’t we have some fun out of it? Play a rag on them, you know.”
“Dress up in a sheet and rub wet matches on one’s hands?” suggested Ardiune.
“THE PASSAGE WAS VERY DARK, BUT MORVYTH
HAD BROUGHT HER ELECTRIC TORCH”