“Rubbish!” indignantly, “is it? Oh, just you wait and see. Ask old Mr. Soames, the pensioner, as has been here this thirty year—ask any one—and they will all tell you the same story.”
“Story, indeed!” cried Mrs. Jackson, with a loud, rude laugh.
“Well, it’s a true story, ma’am—but you need not hear it unless you like it.”
“Oh, but I should like to hear it very much,” her naturally robust curiosity coming to the front. “Please do tell it to me.”
“Well, twenty years ago, more or less, some young officers lived in that bungalow, and one of them in a passion killed his Khitmatgar. They say he never meant to do it, but the fellow was awfully cheeky, and he threw a bottle at his head and stretched him dead. It was all hushed up, but that young officer came to a bad end, and the house began to get a bad name—people died there so often; two officers of delirium tremens; one cut his throat, another fell over the verandah and broke his neck—and so it stands empty! No one stays a week.”
“And why?” demanded the other, boldly. “Lots of people die in houses; they must die somewhere.”
“But not as they do there!” shrilly interrupted Mrs. Clark. “The Khitmatgar comes round at dusk, or at night, just like an ordinary servant, with pegs or lemonade and so on. Whoever takes anything from his hand seems to get a sort of madness on them, and goes and destroys themselves.”
“It’s a fine tale, and you tell it very well,” said Mrs. Jackson, rising and nodding her red cock’s feathers, and her placid, dark, fat face. “There does be such in every station; people must talk, but they won’t frighten me.”
And having issued this manifesto, she gave her hostess a limp shake of the hand and waddled off.
“She’s jealous of the grand big house, and fine compound, fit for gentry,” said Mrs. Jackson to herself, “and she thinks to get me out of it. Not that she could get in! for she has to live in quarters; and she is just a dog in the manger, and, anyways, it’s a made-up story from first to last!”