When he entered the dining-room, Mrs. Brown was speaking to Ethel.
“Ethel, darling, William very kindly took dear Bunker to Mr. Gorton’s this afternoon. We wanted you to be spared the pain of knowing till it was over, but now it’s over and Bunker didn’t suffer at all, you know, darling, and——”
At that moment there arose from the garden the familiar hair-raising, ear-splitting sound. “Yah-ah-ah-ah-AH.”
Ethel burst into tears.
“It’s Bunker’s ghost,” she said, “Oh, it’s his ghost.”
But it wasn’t Bunker’s ghost, for Bunker’s solid, earthly, mangy form appeared at that very moment upon the window-sill.
William’s heart stood still. In the sudden silence that greeted the apparition of the earthly body of Bunker, his mind grasped the important fact that he must have taken the wrong cat, and that the less he said about it the better.
“William,” said Mrs. Brown reproachfully, “you might have done a little thing like that for your sister.”
“I thought——” said William feebly, “I mean, I meant——”
“Well, you must do it after tea,” said Mrs. Brown firmly; “it isn’t kind of you to cause your sister all this unnecessary suffering just because you’re too lazy to walk down to Gorton’s.”