“What?” exclaimed everybody.
“Owls!” said Mr Waldron in a thrilling whisper. Charlotte and Jerry, and one or two others, who afterwards denied it by the way, screamed.
“Oh, papa,” said Charlotte, “you did so frighten us.”
“Well, my dears, it shows how easily nerves can be worked up to be frightened at nothing. It was your own imaginations that frightened you.”
“Then do you mean,” said Noble, in rather a disappointed tone, “that there was nothing in it at all?”
Mr Waldron hesitated.
“I can’t say,” he replied. “I don’t know. I think it was a very curious coincidence that for the first time for long any colour should have been given to the old story, just when the squire died; and even more, just when the estates’ reverting to the female line was stopped. Of course this tells two ways—these circumstances following after made the incident impressive.”
“Yes,” said Noble; “I see.”
“But, papa,” said Charlotte, “didn’t you say that the poor grand—yes, grand-nephew, who so nearly had all, came off very badly? That needn’t have been—the squire might have left him something.”
“He meant to do so, but—it is a long story, and the legal details would only confuse you. The squire had left things, as was usual in the family, all to the male heir, and failing him, to the female line; indeed, there was not very much he could alienate from the property, and the new squire had debts when he came into it, though it is in a much better way now. But the old squire had never really anticipated that the Australian Osberts would turn up. There was room for a lawsuit about what he had meant for his sister and her grandson; and they could not fight it. So all went from them.”