“Then try and leave off shivering, and tell me what frightened you so. And who can have been mischievous enough to tell you all that nonsense about the ghost?” she added indignantly.
“It wasn’t any one here,” said Jerry. “I’ve known it a long time, and I never was frightened before. It was papa who told it us—he stayed here once when he was a little boy, and he was frightened himself. And he slept in the very room where I am now—that is how I knew the name.”
“Well, if your father knows the whole story he might have told you that the ghost never appears to or is heard by any one but a member of the Osbert family, which shows you couldn’t have heard it, my dear Gervais,” said Claudia smiling, in order to comfort him, though to tell the truth her own heart was beating a good deal faster than usual.
Jerry’s face cleared.
“I didn’t know that,” he said. “I am very glad.”
“But what am I to do?” said Claudia. “I must get you warm again. I suppose I had better call up Mrs Ball or some one.”
“Oh, no, please don’t,” Jerry entreated. “I should be so ashamed. I’ll try and not mind now, if you’d let me have the candle to go back to my room with.”
But his wan face and trembling voice belied his words—though Claudia respected him the more for his struggle to overcome his fears.
“I’ll go with you to your room,” she said, “and we’ll try to make up the fire. It would be much cheerier with a good blaze, wouldn’t it?”
The two took their way across the landing through the door, which Claudia had so thoughtfully propped open. And “Oh,” Jerry ejaculated, “I don’t know what I would have done if that door had been shut!”