This request was complied with; and the old man slowly proceeded up the marble staircase, followed by the whole party.
Mrs. Bustard and her daughters were highly delighted at the splendid appearance of the mansion; and their joy was expressed by repeated exclamations of "Beautiful!"—"Charming!"—"Quite a palace!"—"Well, I never!"—"Oh! the sweet place!"—and other sentences of equally significant meaning.
"Ah! this here mansion has seen a many strange things," said the old gardener, as he admitted the company into a handsome apartment, the shutters of which were open: "this wery room is the one where Mr. Gilbert Vernon throwed his-self out of winder about two years ago."
"Threw himself out of the window!" cried Mrs. Bustard; "and what did he do that for?"
"To kill his-self, ma'am," answered the old man. "I wasn't here at the time: I'd gone down into the country to see a garden that a friend o' mine manured with some stuff that he bought in a jar at the chemist's—about a pint of it to a acre. Ah! it's a wonderful thing, to be sure, to be able to carry manure enow for a whole garden in your veskit-pocket, as one may say."
"But you was speaking about a gentleman who threw himself out of the window?" said Mrs. Bustard, impatiently.
"Ah! so I were," continued the gardener. "It was told in the newspapers at the time; but no partickler cause was given. Oh! there was a great deal of mystery about all that business; and I don't like to say much on it, 'cos Mr. Vernon is knowed to walk."
"Known to walk!" exclaimed several of the ladies and gentlemen, all as it were speaking in one breath.
"Yes," returned the gardener, with a solemn shake of the head: "Gilbert Vernon sleeps in a troubled grave; and his sperret wanders about the mansion of a night. If it wasn't that me and my wife is old and friendless, and must go to the workus if we hadn't this place, we'd not sleep another night in Ravensworth Hall."
"Why, my dear Al!" ejaculated Mrs. Bustard, casting a terrified glance around, although the sun was shining gloriously and pouring a flood of golden lustre through the windows,—"you have gone and bought a haunted house, I do declare!"