William was enjoying himself. He walked with a swagger. He almost believed what he said. She gasped.
"Oh, go on!" she said. "Tell me all."
He went on. He soared aloft on the wings of imagination, his hands in his pockets, his freckled face puckered up in frowning mental effort. He certainly enjoyed himself.
"If only some of it could happen to me," breathed his confidante. "Does it come to you at nights, William?"
"Yes," nodded William. "Nights mostly."
"I shall—watch to-night," said Cousin Mildred. "And you say the house is old?"
"Awful old," said William, reassuringly.
Her attitude to William was a relief to the rest of the family. Visitors sometimes objected to William.
"She seems to have almost taken to William," said his mother, with a note of unflattering incredulity in her voice.
William was pleased yet embarrassed by her attentions. It was a strange experience to him to be accepted by a grown-up as a fellow-being. She talked to him with interest and a certain humility, she bought him sweets and seemed pleased that he accepted them, she went for walks with him, and evidently took his constrained silence for the silence of depth and wisdom.