Arbuthnot had come in later than usual, and had appeared to be in an unusual mood. He was pale when he entered, and had no jesting speech to make. He took his seat by Bertha, and replied to her remarks with but little of his customary animation, now and then lapsing into silence as if he had forgotten his surroundings. Bertha seemed inclined to let his humor pass without notice, as if it was not exactly a new experience; but Richard commented upon it.
"Something has gone wrong," he said. "What is it, Larry?"
"Nothing has gone wrong," Arbuthnot answered, with a short, cheerless laugh. "I have seen a ghost, that is all."
"A ghost!" said Bertha, in a low voice, and then sat silent, guarding her face from the fire with her favorite peacock-feather screen.
The professor began to stir his tea round and round, which exercise was his customary assistance to reflection or debate. He glanced at the peacock-feather screen, and then at Arbuthnot.
"A ghost is always an interesting scientific conundrum," he observed. "What form did it take?"
Arbuthnot laughed his short, cheerless laugh again.
"It took the form of a sanguine young man from the West," he said, "who has just come into a twelve-hundred-dollar clerkship, and feels that unending vistas of fortune lie before him. He was in such good spirits about it that I rather lost my hold on myself, and said things I might as well have left unsaid."
"What did you say?" Richard asked.