Mrs. Bosanquet put down her needlework and said mildly: "You feel someone in the wall, my dear? I do hope to goodness there isn't a skeleton anywhere. I never could bear the thought of them, for they seem to me most unnatural."

"Aunt!" shrieked Celia. "A skeleton in the wall? Don't be so awful! Why should there be?"

"I daresay there's no such thing, my dear, but I always remember reading a most unpleasant story about someone who was walled up in a monastery, or a convent - I forget which, but it was something to do with monks, I know."

"Oh Aunt Lilian, Aunt Lilian!" groaned Charles. "Et tu, Brute!"

"If I thought for one moment," said Celia emphatically, "that anyone had been walled up inside this house, I'd walk out here and now."

"Quite right, my dear," agreed Mrs. Bosanquet. "One can't be too careful. I always remember how there was an outbreak of the plague when they disturbed the old burial place somewhere in London."

"On which cheerful thought," said Charles, as a gong sounded in the hall, "we go in to dinner. Anyone any appetite?"

In spite of Mrs. Bosanquet's gloomy recollections it seemed that no one's appetite had failed. Dinner was served in the square dining-room at the side of the house, and though the undrawn curtains let in the soft evening light, Cclia had placed shaded candles on the table, so that the room had a warm, inviting appearance. By common consent there was no more talk of ghosts or skeletons. They went back to the library after dinner, and while Mrs. Bosanquet proceeded to lay out a complicated Naticaue, the others sat down to the Bridge-table. Even when a stutter somewhere in the wainscoting startled them all it did not need the men's assurances to convince the girls that the place was rat-ridden.

"I know," said Celia, gathering up her cards. "Mrs. Bowers is going to set a trap."

"I am not fond of rats," remarked her aunt. "Mice I don't mind at all. Poor little things. Ah, if that had been a red queen I might have brought it out. I once stayed in a farmhouse where they used to run about in the lofts over our heads like a pack of terriers."