North grinned. “I’m afraid I was,” he admitted, “but if there isn’t any legend there surely ought to be. Let’s make one up.”
“No, I won’t have it. I hate haunted houses, and I shan’t allow a ghost to be invented. The place is too beautiful to have a foolish, hackneyed old ghost yarn attached to it. Just because you were up here last summer and this is the first year for most of us, you needn’t think you can rule the roost!”
“Very well,” Lawrence North smiled good-naturedly, “have it your own way. But, truly, I heard rumors last year——”
“Keep them to yourself, then, and when you meet the Varians, as of course you will, don’t say anything to them about such a thing.”
“Your word is law,” and North bowed, submissively. “Here comes the mail at last, and also, here comes Granniss,—the disapproved one!”
A tall outdoorsy-looking young man appeared, and throwing himself into a piazza swing, asked breezily, “Who’s disapproving of me, now? Somebody with absolute lack of fine perception!”
“Nobody here,” began Landon, and then a warning glance from Claire Blackwood prevented his further disclosures on the subject.
“Don’t make a secret of it,” went on Granniss, “own up now, who’s been knocking poor little me?”
“I,” said Mrs Blackwood, coolly.
“Nixy, Madame Claire! You may disapprove of me, but you’re not the one I mean. Who else?”