“I wonder how it would have been if our grandfather—her younger nephew—had come in for it, as she led him to expect,” said Frances. “Of course, you know all about that, Mr Ferraby?”
“Very different, I expect,” said the vicar. “I often wish there was a law against pluralists of estates, as well as of livings. When a man has only one place, you see, it is his home, and that insures his interest in it. Putting aside my natural wish that the big house here were your home, I really do feel it a terrible loss that its owner should be such a complete absentee.”
“It is very wrong,” said Frances, “wrong of Mr Morion, I mean, never to come here, even though there are not many tenants. I should be glad to have an opportunity of saying so to him. You heard of the talk there was a little while ago of some of his connections coming here for a time, I suppose, Mr Ferraby?”
“Yes,” the vicar replied, “and I began to build some hopes on it, and was disappointed to hear it had ended in nothing.”
He glanced round the whole building as he spoke.
“I should like to see this church in better condition,” he went on. “Not that I go in for new-fangled ways, but a good deal could be done without trenching on such ground. I can’t say that it is substantially out of repair, but Mr Milne only advises what is absolutely necessary, and unless Mr Morion came down here enough to get to care for the place, I can hope for nothing more.”
“Is it any prejudice against the place?” said Betty, in her abrupt way. Then a curious gleam came into her eyes. “You know what the people about here say, Mr Ferraby?” she asked; “that great-grand-aunt Elizabeth ‘walks.’ I wonder if possibly, when Mr Littlewood was here, anything—of that kind, like seeing her—happened to him. For he told us his people’s coming was all but decided upon.”
The old vicar looked at her as if he scarcely understood, and Frances turned rather sharply.
“Don’t talk nonsense, Betty,” she said. “Somehow things of that kind—about a place being haunted and so on—ooze out, if one isn’t very careful, and I can’t see but what they may do mischief.”
Mr Ferraby looked at her approvingly.