Braye laughed. “You queered yourself, Uncle Gif, when you announced before we started, that you were not bound to good faith. Your ghost stories are discounted before you tell ’em!”
“But I did see a shape,—a shadowy form, like a tall woman with a shawl over her head——”
“You dreamed it,” said Milly, smiling at him. “Or else——”
“Milly daren’t say it,” laughed Eve, “but I will. Or else, you invented the yarn.”
“If I’m to be called a——”
“Tut, tut, Mr. Bruce,” intervened Tracy, “nobody called you one! Playful prevarication is all right, especially as you warned us you’d fool us if you could. Now I can tell an experience and justly expect to be believed.”
“But you haven’t had any,” and Eve’s translucent eyes turned to him.
“I have,” began Tracy, slowly, “but they’ve been a bit indefinite. It’s unsatisfactory to present only an impression or a suggestion, where facts are wanted. And the Professor says truly that hints and haunts are convincing at night, but repeated, at a pleasant, comfortable tea hour, they sound flimsy and unconvincing.”
“What did you think you saw or heard?” asked Norma, with a reminiscent, far-off look in her eyes.
“Every morning, or almost every morning, at four o’clock, I seem to hear the trailing robes of a presence of some sort. I seem to hear a faint moaning sound, that is like nothing human.”