"I want to be sure," he repeated obstinately.
"But how absurd, Timmy! Why should you want to know about a poor old gentleman who is dead, and of whom you are not likely ever to hear anything? I have often told you how horrid it is to be inquisitive."
Timmy paused over that remark. "I want to know," he said in a low mumbling voice, "because I think I have seen him." He did not look up at his mother as he spoke. With the forefinger of his right hand he began tracing an imaginary pattern on the blue serge skirt which covered her knee.
She looked around apprehensively. Yes, the door was shut. She remembered that Dr. O'Farrell had told her never to encourage the child's confidences, but, on the other hand, never to check them.
"I first saw him the evening she came to supper," Timmy mumbled. "They were walking together down the avenue. I thought he was a real old gentleman. There was a dog with him, a terrier exactly like Flick, only a little bigger. Of course I thought it was a real dog too. But now I know that it wasn't. I know now that it was a ghost-dog. It is that dog, Mum, that frightens the other dogs who meet them—not herself, as she's come to think."
"Oh, Timmy,"—Janet felt acutely uncomfortable—"you know I cannot bear to think that such things really happen to you. If you really think them I'd rather know, but I'd so much rather, dear boy, that you didn't think them."
But Timmy was absorbed in what he was saying. "I know now that it was Colonel Crofton," he went on, "because I've seen an old photograph of him, Mum. Mrs. Crofton brought a tin box full of papers with her, and there were some old photographs in it. There was one of an officer in uniform, and it had written across it, 'Yours sincerely, Cecil Crofton.' She tore it up the day after she came here, and threw it in the waste-paper basket, but her cook took it out of the dustbin, and that's how I saw it."
"How disgusting!" exclaimed his mother, feeling herself now on firm ground. "How often have I had to tell you, Timmy, not to go into other people's kitchens and sculleries? No nice boy, no little gentleman, would do such a thing. Of course it was seeing that photograph made you believe you saw Colonel Crofton's—"
She stopped abruptly, for she never, if she could help it, used the word "ghost," or "spirit," to the child.
"Up to now I've always supposed that animals had no souls, Mum, but now I know they have. I know another thing, too," but there was a doubtful note in his voice. "I suppose that ghost-dog hates Mrs. Crofton because she was so unkind to his master. That's why he makes the other dogs fly at her, I expect—or d'you think it's just because they're frightened that they do it?"