"Why, boys and girls, all in the dark! What mischief are you after?"
"Laughing at the Holyoke Ghost, papa," said Margaret.
"Laughing, indeed; you look as if you had been drinking with him. Silly tale! silly tale! Look at me, I'm hale and hearty. Why don't Sir Godfrey tackle me? I'd like a draught out of his flagon."
A door below us creaked upon its hinges. Ellen shrank back visibly alarmed.
"You silly butterfly," Sir Francis cried, "it's Thomas coming up out of the kitchen with the candles you left me to order. Tea, girls, tea!"
Sir Francis, a stout, warm-faced, and warm-hearted gentleman, kept us amused through the remainder of that evening. My business the next day called me to London, from whence I sailed in a few days for Valparaiso. While abroad, I heard of Ellen's death. On my return to England, I went immediately to the old cathedral city, where I had many friends. There I was shocked to hear that Sir Francis himself had died of apoplexy, and that Margaret, the sole heir and survivor, had gone back, with her health injured, to live with her aunt in the south of England. The dear old house, ghost and all, had been To Let, and had been taken by a school-mistress. It was now "Holyoke House Seminary for Young Ladies."
The school had succeeded through the talent of its mistress; but although she was not a lady of the stocks and backboard school, the sickliness among her pupils had been very noticeable. Scarlet fever, too, had got among them, of which three had died. The school had become in consequence almost deserted, and the lady who had occupied the house was on the point of quitting. Surely, I thought, if this be Sir Godfrey's work, he is as relentless an old goblin as can be imagined.
For private reasons of my own, I traveled south. Margaret bloomed again; as for her aunt, she was a peony in fullest flower. She had a breezy house by the sea-side, abominated dirt and spiders, and, before we had been five minutes together, abused me for having lavender-water upon my handkerchief. She hated smells, it seemed; she carried her antipathy so far as to throw a bouquet out of the window which I had been putting together with great patience and pains for Margaret.
We talked of the old house at ——.
"I tell you what it is, Peggy," she said, "if ever you marry, ghost or no ghost, you're the heir of the Holyokes, and in the old house you shall live. As soon as Miss Williams has quitted, I'll put on my bonnet and run across with you into the north."