"Oh, it's nothing, Celia, but you know how it is when you go to Holyrood, or Hampton Court, or somewhere. There's a sort of atmosphere. I can't explain, but you know."
"Damp?" suggested Peter helpfully.
His sisters looked their scorn. "No, silly," said Margaret. "As though the spirits of all those dead and gone people were looking at one from the walls. That's a bit what I feel here."
Mrs. Bosanquet put down her needlework and said mildly: "You feel someone in the wall, my dear? I do hope to goodness there isn't a skeleton anywhere. I never could bear the thought of them, for they seem to me most unnatural."
"Aunt!" shrieked Celia. "A skeleton in the wall? Don't be so awful! Why should there be?"
"I daresay there's no such thing, my dear, but I always remember reading a most unpleasant story about someone who was walled up in a monastery, or a convent - I forget which, but it was something to do with monks, I know."
"Oh Aunt Lilian, Aunt Lilian!" groaned Charles. "Et tu, Brute!"
"If I thought for one moment," said Celia emphatically, "that anyone had been walled up inside this house, I'd walk out here and now."
"Quite right, my dear," agreed Mrs. Bosanquet. "One can't be too careful. I always remember how there was an outbreak of the plague when they disturbed the old burial place somewhere in London."
"On which cheerful thought," said Charles, as a gong sounded in the hall, "we go in to dinner. Anyone any appetite?"