“What, to find him dead in the morning!” exclaimed Hurst. “You are a nice one, Tod!”
“Oh, well, I don’t mean altogether dead, you know,” acknowledged Tod. “But he’d have had a mortal night of it! All his clothes gummed together from fright, I’ll lay.”
“I don’t think it would do,” deliberated Bywater. “A whole night—twelve hours, that would be—and in a fright all the time, if he is frightened. Look here! I have heard of folks losing their wits through a thing of the sort.”
“I won’t go in for anything of the kind,” said Hurst. “Charley’s not a bad lot, and he shan’t be harmed. A bit of a fright, or a bit of a whacking, not too much of either; that’ll be the thing for Miss Channing.”
“Tod Yorke, who told you he was afraid of ghosts?” demanded Bywater.
“Oh, I know it,” said Tod. “Annabel Channing was telling my sisters about it, for one thing: but I knew it before. We had a servant once who told us so, she had lived at the Channings’. Some nurse frightened him when he was a youngster, and they have never been able to get the fear out of him since.”
“What a precious soft youngster he must have been!” said Mr. Bywater.
“She used to get a ghost and dress it up and show it off to Miss Charley—”
“Get a ghost, Tod?”
“Bother! you know what I mean,” said Tod, testily. “Get a broom or something of that sort, and dress it up with a mask and wings: and he is as scared over it now as he ever was. I don’t care what you say.”