“No,” she maintained, with conviction in her voice, “it wasn’t the least like that. It was a slow, rising sort of sound, and it was the rustle of silk, of stiff silk—of that I am certain; at least, I mean to say I am certain that that was the impression produced on my senses.”
“You’d better write it out for the Psychical Society, it has made you so eloquent,” said Frances laughingly, though in the depths of her heart she was not a little impressed. Then came an exclamation from Betty, which, accustomed as they were to the startling suggestions she was apt to burst out with, for once really took their breath away.
“Frances,” she said, “I’ve thought of something. I’m getting nearly desperate for a change of some kind, and I feel as if I could be brave enough to do anything, especially if you and Eira will back me up. Supposing we three manage to get into the church some evening and wait for the ghost, and try to get something out of her? Would you have the nerve for it?” Her eyes gleamed with excitement, and her whole face was lighted up in a way that for the moment transformed it.
“Betty!” exclaimed her sisters, together, in amazement.
“You must be joking,” Frances added. “You, of all people, to dream of such a thing!”
“I am not joking,” Betty replied. “Just fancy, if we did find out anything. It would be worth while having one’s hair turned grey with fright to begin with.”
“Betty,” said Eira solemnly, “you don’t know what you’re talking about. If you had said such a thing this time yesterday, I should have felt quite different about it. But I can’t put into words the impression left upon me by what I heard—little as it seems. No, indeed,” and she shook her head, “I should never be able to attempt anything of the kind.”
“If you both work yourselves up about it so,” said Frances, “you will make me sorry that it has ever been alluded to. Don’t talk about it any more to-night, or neither of you will sleep. Promise me you won’t?”
“Very well,” Betty replied reluctantly, though her face fell as she gave the promise; for, although it only bound her to the avoidance of the subject for that evening, she felt pretty sure that there would be no chance of enlisting either of her sisters in her scheme. “And,” she thought to herself, “I’m afraid I should never have courage to try it alone, and without courage it would be no use, as everybody knows that unless you speak first to a ghost, he, or she, or it—why does ‘it’ seem so much more terrible?—will never speak to you!”
If it is true, as is often said, that happy times require no chronicler, it is certainly also the case in life that one has to traverse dreary, monotonous stretches of which there is literally nothing to record. This, certainly, was no new experience to the Morion sisters, but it is to be questioned if they had ever before been so painfully conscious of the almost unendurable dreariness of their general circumstances.