“Nor ghosts?”
“No, child.”
“Because you chance never to ha’ seen one, sir!”
“Because I have, rather. Indeed, Rose, a most effective ghost——”
“You have positively seen a ghost? When? Where?” she demanded. But, turning a bend in the road they came upon a horseman, a cadaverous person in threadbare clerical garb, who bestrode a very plump steed.
“A fair prospect to the eye!” he exclaimed, nodding gloomily towards Dering village, where it nestled under the sheltering Down. “Aye, a fair prospect, and yet, in very truth, a ‘whited sepulchre’ ... not a thatch that doesn’t leak, scarce a cottage that is truly habitable——”
“Shameful!” exclaimed my lady.
“And wicked!” added the parson in his gentle voice, his haggard face very woeful. “For how shall folk take heed to their soul’s welfare until their bodies be comfortable? Alas, you behold yonder the evils of a bad landlord. Sir John Dering hath much to answer for. Better he were dead and the land in better keeping.”
“Dead, sir!” exclaimed my lady, aghast.
“And wherefore not?” continued the parson in his gentle accents, while his eyes smouldered. “A merciless, grinding bailiff and a profligate landlord make for a suffering tenantry.”