"I wouldn't do it for anything," said Mattacott. "I'm nought at a pinch; and if 'twas thrust upon me to do it, fifty to one but I should go and lose my head and very like shout out the wrong name, or some such foolishness."
"'Tis true," said Maunder. "With all your good gifts, Timothy, you're the very man to make a mess of this. Besides, your voice will surely betray you."
"I ax this here chap to do it," said Mattacott, turning to Screech himself. "Maunder, no doubt, would do it for me, as my lifelong friend; but he's a government servant and his time is not his own. Therefore I ax Billy; and, if it goes right, I'll pay him down a crown; and if it don't go right, I'll pay half-a-crown; and who can say fairer?"
"So far so good then," summed up Billy; "and I'm bound to say I think you're right. I can put a hollow sound into my voice and bring it up from my boots, in a way that would make any girl go goose-flesh if she heard me after dark on a common week-day, not to name Christmas Eve at Crazywell. Leave that to me when the time cometh. Now the next thing is, what shall I say?"
"Nought but the man's name," advised Ernest Maunder; "the less you say the awfuller 'twill be."
"Just 'Bart Stanbury! Bart Stanbury!' twice," whispered Mattacott. "You'll be snug hid in a fuzz bush, of course; and once you mark that she's heard you, you can slip off home as quick as need be to prove 'twasn't you, if anything comes to be said about it after."
Billy nodded.
"Just so; but I mustn't say 'Bart' Stanbury," he explained. "You see the man's christening name is 'Bartholomew,' and the spirit wouldn't know as we called him 'Bart' for shortness. The full name must be spoken, and that I shall do. So there 'twill be, and Jane West will believe that the man's booked for death afore another year be out."
Mr. Mattacott showed a little emotion on Stanbury's account, but Billy overruled his qualms. The matter was allowed to drop and a diversion threw the two groups together and turned conversation into a former topic.
Ellas Bowden came in, cold and rosy, out of the night.