"Oh, Mummy, will you get the twopence back?"
THE ROOM AT THE BACK.
[A story of the supernatural, which should not be read late at night by persons of weak nerves.]
Outwardly, "Chatholme" was as all the other villas in Dunmoral Avenue, which were just detached enough to allow the butcher's boy to squeeze himself and his basket—and perhaps the cook—between any two of them, and differed from each other in nothing but names, numbers and window-curtains.
And the interior of the house, when the Pottigrews took possession of it, seemed equally commonplace. There is no need to show you all over it, but if you intend to peruse this narrative, in spite of the warning above, it is desirable that you should at least inspect the ground-floor.
On one side of the hall, which was faintly illumined in the daytime by a fanlight, was the drawing-room; on the other side was the dining-room, and behind the dining-room was a smaller room with a French-window looking on to the back-garden, which probably was described by the house-agents as the "morning-room," but was by Mr. Pottigrew designated his "study."
Prosaic enough, you will say. And yet there was that about the ground-floor of "Chatholme" which was anything but matter-of-fact, as the Pottigrews began to discover before they had been in residence many days.