BY JENNIE CHAPPELL.
The Briars was a very old-fashioned house, standing in its own grounds, about ten miles from Smokeytown. It was much dilapidated, for Miss Clare the owner and occupier, had not the necessary means for repairing it, and as she had lived there from her birth—a period of nearly sixty years—did not like to have the old place pulled down. Not more than half the rooms were habitable, and in one of them—-the former dining-room—there sat, one January afternoon, Miss Clare, with her young nephew and niece. They were having tea, and the firelight danced cosily on the worn, once handsome furniture, and the portly metal teapot, which replaced the silver one, long since parted with for half its value in current coin. The only modern article in the room, excepting the aforesaid nephew and niece, was a pretty, though inexpensive, pianoforte, which stood under a black-looking portrait of a severe-visaged lady with her waist just under her arms, and a general resemblance, as irreverent Aubrey said, to a yard and a half of pump water.
Just now Miss Clare was consuming toast in silence, and Kate was wondering if there was any way of making bows that had been washed twice and turned three times look like new; while Aubrey's handsome head was bent over a book, for he was addicted to replenishing mind and body at the same time. Suddenly Miss Clare exclaimed, "Dear me; it is fifty years to-day since Marjorie Westford died!"
Kate glanced up at the pump-water lady, with the laconic remark, "Fancy!"
"It's very likely that on such an interesting anniversary the fair Miss Marjorie may revisit her former haunts," said Aubrey, raising a pair of glorious dark eyes with a mischievous smile; "so if you hear an unearthly bumping and squealing in the small hours, you may know who it is."
"The idea of a ghost 'bumping and squealing,'" laughed Kate. "And Miss Marjorie, too! The orthodox groan and glide would be more like her style." Then her mind wandered to a story connected with that lady, which had given rise to much speculation on the part of the young Clares. Half a century ago there lived at the Briars a family consisting of a brother and two sisters; the former a gay young spendthrift of twenty-five; the girls, Anna, aged twenty, and Lucy, the present Miss Clare, nine years old respectively. With them resided a maiden sister of their mother's, Marjorie Westford, an eccentric person, whose property at her death reverted to a distant relative. A short time before she died she divided her few trinkets and personal possessions between the three young people, bequeathing to Anna, in addition, a sealed letter, to be read on her twenty-first birthday. The girl hid the packet away lest she should be tempted to read it before the appointed time; but ere that arrived she was drowned by the upsetting of a boat, and never since had the concealed letter been found, although every likely place had been searched for it. Lucy never married, and George had but one son, whose wife died soon after the birth of Kate, and in less than a year he married again, this time to a beautiful young heiress, subsequently mother to Aubrey, who was thus rather more than two years Kate's junior.
The younger George Clare, a spendthrift like his father, speedily squandered his wife's fortune, and died, leaving her with barely sufficient to keep herself and little son from want. Yet such was Mrs. Clare's undying love for the husband who had treated her so badly, that in their greatest straits she refused to part with a locket containing his likeness and hers which was valuable by reason of the diamonds and sapphires with which it was encrusted. This locket was the only thing she had to leave her little Aubrey when she died, and he, a lovely boy of nine summers, went with his half-sister (who had a small sum of money settled on her by her maternal grandfather) to reside with their great-aunt, Miss Clare.
Presently the quietness at the tea-table was disturbed by a loud single knock at the front door, and Aubrey bounced out of the room.
"A note from Mr. Green," he said, returning. "I wonder what's up now? No good, I'm afraid."
This foreboding was only too fully realised. The agent for Miss Clare's little property at Smokeytown wrote to tell her that during a recent gale one of her best houses had been so much injured by the falling of a factory chimney, that the repairs would cost quite £30 before it could again be habitable. This was a dire misfortune. So closely was their income cut, and so carefully apportioned to meet the household expenses, that, after fullest consideration, Miss Clare could only see her way clear for getting together about £15 towards meeting this unexpected demand, and three very anxious faces bent around the table in discussion.