"The girls promptly warmed to him. "You must stay ;iud have tea with us," Celia said. "And does the doctor really drink, or is it drugs?"
"Ah, poor old Roote!" said the Colonel charitably. "Mustn't be unchristian, I suppose. Leave that to the Vicar's wife, what?" His ready laugh broke from him. "Still, I must admit poor Roote is rather too fond of the bottle. A good doctor, mind you, and whatever they say I'll not believe he was ever the worse for wear except in his off hours. Wife's a bit of a tartar, I believe."
"What about the eccentric Mr. Titmarsh?" inquired Celia.
"Not an ounce of harm in him, my dear young lady," the Colonel assured her. "Queer old bird: not much in my line, I'm afraid. Very clever, and all that sort of thing, so they say. Don't be surprised if you run up against him in the dark one night. Gave me the shock of my life when I first found him in my garden. Thought he was a burglar." He burst out laughing again. "Told me he was putting lime on a tree, or some such flum-diddle. He's a - what d'ye call it? - entomologist."
Peter handed him his cup and saucer. "Well, I'm glad you warned us, Colonel. Otherwise we might have mistaken him for our ghost."
"You don't mean to tell me you believe in that story?" demanded Colonel Ackerley.
"Of course we don't!" said Celia. "But our butler does, and so does the housemaid. Bowers swears he's heard ghostly hands feeling over his door at night."
The Colonel set down his cup. "Has he, by Gad?" he said. "But you haven't heard anything yourselves, have you?"
Celia hesitated. It was Margaret who answered. "Yes, I think we all have, but we put it down to rats."
The Colonel looked from one to the other. "Footsteps, do you mean?"