"Was not he very much frightened?" asked Beatrix, who was deeply interested in the ghost.
"I hope you gave him a smelling-bottle?" inquired Tom Linnett, with a tender concern.
"Well, I don't suppose he was," said the General, smiling good-humouredly on pretty Beatrix, while he loftily passed by the humorous inquiry of the young gentleman. "He was, in fact, on dooty, you know; and there were occasional noises and damage done in the store-room—in fact, just the same as if Smith was not there."
"Oh, possibly Smith himself among the bottles!" suggested Linnett.
"He always got in as quick as he could," continued the General; "but could not see anyone. Things were broken—bottles sometimes."
"How very strange," exclaimed Beatrix, charmed to hear the tale of wonder.
"We could not make it out; it was very odd, you know," resumed the narrator.
"You weren't frightened, General?" inquired Linnett.
"No, sir," replied the General, who held that a soldier's courage, like a lady's reputation, was no subject for jesting, and conveyed that sentiment by a slight pause, and a rather alarming stare from under his fierce grey eyebrows. "No one was frightened, I suppose; we were all men in the house, sir."
"At home, I think, we'd have suspected a rat or a cat," threw in the Rector.