I looked again, and did see a girl just emerging from a clump of beeches, and carrying a small trunk upon her head.
"What an extraordinary day to choose for travelling," I said drily.
"Ah, that is Irish superstition!" rejoined my hostess. "That is my last kitchen-maid you see—she is walking seven miles, with that trunk on her head, sooner than wait a few hours, when I could have sent her to the station."
"Is she mad?" was my natural comment.
"Oh no! only desperately frightened. She has not been here a week yet, and she is much too terrified to be coherent. All I can make out is that nothing on earth would induce her to spend another night at Rush. I could have sent her over to Marley easily to-morrow morning at eight o'clock, but she would not hear of it. And whether she has really seen anything, or only been frightened by the stories of the other servants, I don't know. Anyway, she has certainly the courage of her opinions, and is prepared to suffer for them! I would rather meet half-a-dozen ghosts than carry that trunk on my head seven miles in this pouring rain." Then turning round carelessly, she remarked: "I suppose you have not seen or heard anything, Miss Bates, since you came? I hope not, for I am sure you are not strong enough for mundane visitors yet, let alone the other kind."
We were passing through the handsome circular hall at the time, and I said eagerly: "Oh no! Thank goodness, I've seen and heard nothing. I don't think I should be allowed to see anything whilst I am so weak and poorly."
Almost at the moment of saying these words something impelled me to place my hand upon a particular spot in the great stone wall by my side. "But there is something here I don't like," I said, tapping it—"something uncanny—but I don't know what it is."
Mrs Kent made no remark; and I thought no more of the circumstance until the following year, when I was told by Mr Stead that Mrs Kent was over in England, and had been lunching with him and asking for me.
"She was giving me a most graphic account of the way you 'spotted' those skeletons at Rush Castle," he said.
I was completely puzzled by this remark. I had never spotted a single skeleton to my knowledge, either at Rush or elsewhere, and I told him so; but he persisted in saying that Mrs Kent had told him a very different story, and that most certainly she had mentioned me as the percipient.