I like your tapestry, and I
like your oak, and I like your secret stairs. But I think your
ancestors should have left well enough alone, and stopped at that."
So I said they had, as far as I knew, and he shook his head and
said:
"No, Sir. Your ancestors take the air of a night with their heads
under their arms. A ghost that sighed or glided or rustled I could
have stood, and thanked you for it, and considered it in the rent.
But a ghost that bullets go through while it stands grinning with a
bare neck and its head loose under its own arm and little boys
screaming and fainting in their beds no! What I say is, If this is a
British hereditary high-toned family ghost, excuse me!" And he
went off by the early train.
"I say," the stricken Jimmy remarked, "I am sorry, and I don't think
we did faint, really I don't but we thought it would be just what you
wanted. And perhaps someone else will take the house."
"I don't know anyone else rich enough," said Lord Yalding. "Mr.
Conway came the day before he said he would, or you'd never have
got hold of him. And I don't know how you did it, and I don't want
to know. It was a rather silly trick."
There was a gloomy pause. The rain beat against the long
windows.
"I say" Jimmy looked up at Lord Yalding with the light of a new
idea in his round face "I say, if you're hard up, why don't you sell
your jewels?"
"I haven't any jewels, you meddlesome young duffer," said Lord
Yalding quite crossly; and taking his hands out of his pockets, he
began to walk away.
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