“Henry—Warren’s—ghost!” said amazed Rosemary, who had never heard the story.
“Yes,” sobbed Faith hysterically. “It’s there—on the Bailey dyke—we saw it—and it started to—chase us.”
Rosemary herded the three distracted creatures to the Ingleside veranda. Gilbert and Anne were both away, having also gone to the House of Dreams, but Susan appeared in the doorway, gaunt and practical and unghostlike.
“What is all this rumpus about?” she inquired.
Again the children gasped out their awful tale, while Rosemary held them close to her and soothed them with wordless comfort.
“Likely it was an owl,” said Susan, unstirred.
An owl! The Meredith children never had any opinion of Susan’s intelligence after that!
“It was bigger than a million owls,” said Carl, sobbing—oh, how ashamed Carl was of that sobbing in after days—“and it—it grovelled just as Mary said—and it was crawling down over the dyke to get at us. Do owls crawl?”
Rosemary looked at Susan.
“They must have seen something to frighten them so,” she said.