“It’s awfully jolly and heavenly!” said Constancy, staring at the dazzling clouds with strong, unfaltering eyes. “It’ll do for a description.”
“What will do for a description?” said an answering voice, like a softer echo of her own, as another girl, a year or so younger than herself, came in and stood below the window, lifting up a face of almost exactly the same shape, more delicate and perhaps less forcible.
“Rooks—peace—brownish meadows, and blue sky,” said Constancy. “Nice description. What have you been doing, Florella?”
“Talking to Aunt Constance about the Waynfletes, and the place. She says she is glad we have come; the house is gloomy, and she has heard odd noises. Oh, Cosy, do you think it could be haunted?”
“That would be luck!” said Constancy, jumping down. “Oh, I say, even a little noise would do to begin with! If I could only get a ghost, and the way people behaved with a ghost, it would be beautiful! It would do for the Penny Pleasure. Now, Flo, remember, you are not to tell auntie I read all those novels at Weymouth. One must have lovers, if one writes a novel, and I never can understand going into raptures about anybody, so I must get it at secondhand. Let us come down to tea—the Waynflete boys will be coming. Perhaps they can tell us about the ghost. I shall investigate it thoroughly, and if ever I am interviewed by the Psychical Society, I shall take care to give more lucid answers than most people seem to do.”
Constancy and Florella Vyner were the orphan daughters of a man who had never known how to make his considerable talents marketable, or to adapt his style to the Guide of Youth, or to the Penny Pleasure Giver, as self-interest required. He lived and died the vicar of a small town parish, and his two little girls, already motherless and with only a few thousand pounds between them, came under the care of their mother’s sister, Mrs John Palmer, who had married one of Mrs Waynflete’s connections. She was a widow, well off and childless, with a house in London, and she gave all the advantages to Constancy and Florella which she would have bestowed on her own daughters. She was very fond of Florella, and as much so of Constancy as a not very clever aunt was likely to be of a girl who not only thought that she knew better than her elders, but, like Prince Prigio, always did.
Constancy did not mean to be the mere society young lady into which her aunt expected the shining light of the high-school to develop. She had definite ambitions, and definite powers to enable her to fulfil them.
“What sort of noises did auntie hear, Flo?” she asked as she put away her papers.
“She hasn’t heard any. But the servants say there are queer whisperings and rustlings, and the lodge-keeper told them that one of the old Waynflete’s ‘walks.’ Oh! what’s that?”
“The ghost,” said Constancy, laughing, and emerging from behind the rustling, fresh calendered chintz of the old-fashioned four-post bed. “You hear a little faint rustle all round you, then crack goes a panel! You listen for footsteps, and pit-a-pat up the stairs they come. The door slowly opens—”