"'Want not,'" he read. He looked in vain for the "Waste not," but that part of the maxim was hidden by the carved representation of a full ear of corn.
"It's a very nice—motto. Have some champagne?"
"No thanks, I only drink water, wine flies to my head; I am like James. I am going to have a peach—have one."
"Thank you, I am eating sardines. You remind me of the old gentleman—he was short-sighted—who offered me a pinch of snuff once when I was eating a sole."
Fanny, with her teeth set in the peach, gave a little shriek of laughter, but Mr Bevan was perfectly grave. Still, for perhaps the first time in his life, he felt his possibilities as a humorist, and determined to exploit them.
"Talking about ghosts"—ghosts and mothers-in-law, to the medium intellect, are always fair game,—"talking about ghosts," said he, "you said, I think, Cousin Fanny——"
"Call me Fanny," said that lady, who, having eaten her peach, was now helping herself to sardines. "I hate that word 'cousin,' it sounds so stiff. What about ghosts?"
"About ghosts," he answered slowly, his new-found sense of humour suddenly becoming lost. "Oh yes, you said, Fanny, that a ghost was haunting this house."
"Yes, Fanny Lambert. I told you she hid her jewels before she hung herself. When people see her she is always beckoning them to follow her. We found James insensible one night on the landing upstairs; he told us next morning he had seen her, and she had beckoned him to follow her, and after that he remembered nothing more."