THE GHOST OF BARMOUTH MANOR.
I wouldn’t make a fuss about it if I were you,” said Charlie Craven, pursuing that search from pocket to pocket which men, having no particular reputation for tidiness to maintain, are accustomed to institute when they have filled a pipe and are anxious to light it.
“A fuss about it?” cried his sister Madge. “A fuss—good gracious! What is there to make a fuss about in all that I have told you? A dream—I ask you candidly if you think that I am the sort of girl to make a fuss over a dream?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Charlie. He had succeeded in finding in one of his pockets a match-box—an empty match-box.
“Well, you should know,” said Madge severely.
“There now, you are; making a fuss over something a deal flimsier than your dream,” laughed her brother. “I wonder if that palace of your dream was no better supplied than this house with matches: if it wasn’t, I shouldn’t care to live in it for any length of time.”
“It’s so like a man to keep on bothering himself and every one about him for a match, while all the time a fire is roaring on the hearth behind him, and his pockets are full of bills—the usual Christmas bills, the least of which would light all the pipes he smokes in a day, and that’s saying a good deal.”
“How clever you are! I never thought of the fire. Well, as I was remarking, I wouldn’t bother telling my dreams to any one if I were you. Dreams—well, dreams are all rot, you know.”
“I’m not quite so sure of that as you seem to be, O wisest of brothers. The wisest of people in the world—next to you, of course—have thought that there was something in dreams, haven’t they?”
“They were wrong. My aunt! the rot that I have dreamt from time to time!”