‘Well,’ said Giles, puffing out his chest, ‘the deed is done. It wasn’t so bad, was it? I wonder if there are any more haunted houses left in these parts. I am feeling pretty brave now—indeed, this is one of my bravest days. How do you feel, Anne?’
‘I’m doing nicely, thank you,’ said his sister. ‘But one haunted house a day for me will be enough. I was just thinking, Giles, as we were coming up those cellar-steps, the stone all worn into hollows by all the feet that must have trudged up and down them for hundreds of years ...’
‘Well, what about it?’ asked Giles. ‘This was an inn, you know, where I suppose thousands of guests came a year. And all the food and wine for those people was brought up from the cellar. No wonder the steps are worn.’
‘Yes, that’s just it,’ Anne went on. ‘I had been thinking again of what Mother said, about Piers Belmont knowing everyone. I suppose an innkeeper must have come to know an enormous lot of people in his lifetime. That would be as good a way as any to get to know everybody, being an innkeeper, wouldn’t it? Oh, here’s another closet! I wonder what’s in this one.’
They were now standing in what was clearly the kitchen, since it had large ovens next to its fireplace and nails and hooks for hanging pots and pans. Anne opened the closet. At first she thought it was empty, but by standing on tiptoe she was able to see on to the higher shelves; and there she found two pieces of linen. On spreading them out she saw they were aprons.
‘Oh, Giles!’ she cried. ‘Let’s put them on.’
‘What on earth for?’ he asked.
‘Why, then we can play at being innkeepers.’
At first Giles was not very keen about the idea; but after Anne had persuaded him a little, he thought it might not be such a bad game, and he tied his apron round his waist. In a flash they became Master Giles and Mistress Anne, the host and hostess of the Golden Mitre. As busy as monkeys they were, running up and down stairs; making make-believe beds; skipping in and out of the kitchen to serve make-believe meals; calling to Joe, their make-believe houseboy, to ‘fetch in those trunks and hurry about it, Sirrah!’
Such a good time did they have, attending to the wants of a never-ending procession of travellers coming to and going from the inn, that they hardly stopped playing even when the rain came on again. However, when the water began driving into the passage through the front entrance, Master Giles called out of the window to his servant Joe to come in and fasten up the front door—‘and be quick about it, Sirrah!’ But the hard-working Joe took so long about it that the master of the inn came down and did it himself. And no easy matter it was, with a door that had only one hinge left to hold it against the screaming wind. But he got an old broom-handle to prop it, or strut it, at one corner, and it kept the storm out.