"Smells! good gracious, of what?" asks Julia.
"Bones!" says Mr. Browne, mysteriously. "Dead bones!"
"What sort of bones?" asks Portia, starting into life, and really growing a little pale, even beneath the crimson glare of the pine logs.
"Human bones!" says Dicky, growing more gloomy as he says this, and marks with rapture the impression it makes upon his audience. "It reminds one of graves, and sarcophaguses, and cemeteries, and horrid things that rustle in coffin cloths, and mop and mow in corners. But if you will come, I will make you all heartily welcome."
"Thank you. No, I don't think I'll come," says Julia, casting an uneasy glance behind her; the recesses of the room are but dimly lit, and appear ghostlike, highly suggestive of things uncanny from where she sits. "Dicky," pathetically, not to say affrightedly, "you have told us plenty about your horrid old house; don't tell us any more."
"There isn't any more to tell," says Dicky, who is quite content with his success so far.
"You haven't yet told us where you were all day," says Portia, lowering her fan to look at him.
"In the village for the most part—I dote on the village—interviewing the school and the children. Mr. Redmond got hold of me, and took me in to see the infants. It was your class I saw, I think, Dulce; it was so uncommonly badly behaved."
Dulce, in her dark corner, gives no sign that she has heard this gracious speech.
"I don't think much of your schoolmaster either," goes on Mr. Browne, unabashed. "His French, I should say, is not his strong point. Perhaps he speaks it 'after the scole of Stratford-atte-Bowe,' for certainly 'Frenche of Paris, is to him unknowe?'"