“Yes, we have been most lucky to get it.”
“I hope you will think so, at the end of three months,” observed Mrs. Starkey, with a significant pursing of her lips. “Mrs. Chalmers is a stranger up here, or she would not have been in such a hurry to jump at it.”
“Why, what is the matter with it?” inquired Aggie. “It is well built, well furnished, well situated, and very cheap.”
“That’s just it—suspiciously cheap. Why, my dear Mrs. Shandon, if there was not something against it, it would let for two hundred rupees a month. Common sense would tell you that!”
“And what is against it?”
“It’s haunted! There you have the reason in two words.”
“Is that all? I was afraid it was the drains. I don’t believe in ghosts and haunted houses. What are we supposed to see?”
“Nothing,” retorted Mrs. Starkey, who seemed a good deal nettled at our smiling incredulity.
“Nothing!” with an exasperating laugh.
“No, but you will make up for it in hearing. Not now—you are all right for the next six weeks—but after the monsoon breaks, I give you a week at Briarwood. No one would stand it longer, and indeed you might as well bespeak your rooms at Cooper’s Hotel now. There is always a rush up here in July, by the two months’ leave people, and you will be poked into some wretched go-down.”