“It’s all Bertrand,” said Mavis to herself, feeling ready to cry. “I’m sure they are going to plan some very naughty unkind thing.”
They were on their way up the turret-stair now; the west turret. They had already explored the other side. Suddenly a strange feeling came over Mavis; she had not been in this part of the castle since the adventure in the grotto.
“She said she comes to the west turret still,” thought the child; “just as she did when cousin Hortensia was a little girl. I wonder if she only comes in the night? I wonder if possibly I shall see her ever up here? If I did, I think I would ask her to stop Bertrand making Ruby naughty. I am sure dear Princess Forget-me-not could make anybody do anything she liked.”
And she could not help having a curious feeling of expecting something, when Ruby, who was in front, threw open the turret-room door.
“This is the haunted room, Bertrand,” she said, and there was a mocking tone in her voice. “At least so Mavis and cousin Hortensia believe. Cousin Hortensia can tell you a wonderful story of a night she spent here if you care to hear it.”
Bertrand laughed contemptuously.
“I’d like to see a ghost uncommonly,” he said.
“It would take a good lot of them to frighten me.”
“That’s what I say,” said Ruby. “But the room looks dingy enough, doesn’t it? I don’t think I ever saw it look so dingy before.”
“It looks as if it was full of smoke,” said Bertrand, sniffing about; “but yet I don’t smell smoke.”