“Then ’ow can thicky be wot I seed?”
“True,” she mused. “Plainly it wasn’t Diogenes. We’ll walk on, I think, and look for your ghost.”
Peggy was anxious to walk on. Mr Chadwick was advancing towards them and she was not prepared just then for an encounter. She waved a hand to him.
“I am going to the gate with Robert,” she called to him, “to look for spooks. You can come to meet me, to see that I am not carried away on a broomstick.”
Robert did not approve of the levity of her manner. He felt, indeed, so resentful as he hurried along the avenue at her side, with Diogenes in attendance, that he was doubly relieved when they reached the lodge gates without any further supernatural visitation, the absence of which he attributed, he informed her, to the presence of the dog. But the transfer of half a crown from Peggy’s slim hand to Robert’s horny palm softened his resentment sufficiently to allow him to wish her a friendly good-night, and to further express the hope that “nothing dreadful” met her on the way back.
Nothing more dreadful than Mr Chadwick awaited her in the elm avenue; but Peggy at the moment would almost as soon have encountered a ghost as her uncle; a ghost, at least, would not have asked awkward questions.
“What did Robert want?” Mr Chadwick inquired.
“He came with a message—for me.”
“What about?”
“A private message,” Peggy replied.