“Two?” said Peggy, with a questioning intonation. “That’s strange, Robert, because there are supposed to be two ghosts—a lady and a dog. Are you quite sure there wasn’t a dog, after all?”
“There mid ’a’ been a dog,” Robert conceded reluctantly. “But it warn’t like a human dog, nohow. Its eyes was like flames, an’ it didn’ seem to ’ave any legs, seemed to move wi’out touching of the ground. Why not come an’ see for yourself?” he suggested cunningly, “if you don’t believe me. I’ll take care of ’ee.”
Peggy looked thoughtfully at the trembling sexton and appeared to deliberate. It was plain to her that Robert was badly shaken, that his nerve was not equal to the strain of making the return journey alone. She was shrewd enough to penetrate his design in suggesting that she should accompany him, and being of a naturally kindly disposition she fell in with the idea, the more readily because, since reading the note, she was anxious to meet Robert’s ghost, and secure it.
“I don’t disbelieve you,” she returned. “But I should like to see for myself. I should never feel afraid with you.”
So subtle was this flattery and so seemingly sincere, that Robert unconsciously assumed the courageous bearing expected of him; and, when Miss Annersley led him out through a side door into the grounds, he drew himself up and expanded his chest, and bade her keep close to him and he would see she came to no harm. Peggy laughed softly as she drew nearer to him, and the contact of the tall slender figure afforded Robert that comfortable sense of human companionship which helps to minimise the unknown terrors of the dark, even a darkness peopled with misty apparitions. He began to believe quite firmly in his intrepidity.
At the entrance to the avenue they encountered Mr Chadwick; and for a moment it seemed as though Robert’s vaunted courage would desert him, as Diogenes bounded forward out of the gloom and sprang excitedly upon Peggy, greeting her with an effusiveness which, with her uncle looking on, Peggy found secretly embarrassing.
“Is this your ghost?” she asked, glancing up at Robert, while she attempted to restrain the dog, which, in the first moments of joyful recognition, was an impossibility. “I begin to believe we are about to solve the mystery.”
Robert drew his squat figure up to its full height, which was insignificant enough, and eyed her with contemptuous disapproval.
“Be that hanimal as big as a elephant?” he asked. “Be ’e misty like? Would you say, now, that ’e could move wi’out walking, or that ’e shot flames from his eyes? Would you, now?”
“No,” Peggy answered. “I don’t think he tallies with that description.”