"That will do, girls," said Miss Phipp firmly. "And if Miss Starling was the name of your last governess, please call her so."
The ensuing silence was broken by a smothered giggle from Joan, which Nancy covered up by asking in a rather shaky voice of Miss Dexter whether she and Miss Phipp had known each other before.
"Yes," said Miss Dexter, "we were at school together--oh, years ago--and have never seen each other since, until we met on the platform. Funny, wasn't it? I say, is there a ghost at Kencote?"
"Oh, no, it isn't old enough," replied Joan. "But there's one at the dower-house--an old man in one boot who goes about looking for the other one."
"That's a jolly sort of ghost," said Miss Dexter. "Do you know who he was?"
"He is supposed to have been an ancestor in the time of Charles the Second--he's dressed like that--who kicked his servant to death, and----"
"We've got some topping ancestors," put in Nancy. "There's a book about them. Joan and I read it the other day. One of them was called Abraham, and he said if he had a name like that he must live up to it, so he called his sons Jacob and Esau----"
"He only had one and he called him Isaac," interrupted Joan. "You have got it wrong."
"That will do," said Miss Phipp decisively, and just then the carriage clattered under the porch and came to a standstill.
The Squire had not been able to bring himself to meet his guests in the hall, as was the hospitable custom at Kencote. He had meant to do so. He had given in on the main point on which he had held out so long, and honestly intended to behave well about it. He had gone to and fro between his room and the morning-room across the hall, standing first before the fire near which his wife was sitting, and then reading the _Times_ for a few minutes in his own easy-chair, and when the wheels of the first carriage had been heard, and Mrs. Clinton had put aside her work and risen according to custom, he had gone out with her into the hall. But when the servants came through to the door he thought that they cast curious looks at him, as possibly they did, and he bolted suddenly back to the shelter of his room, and stood there listening, until the door of the morning-room was shut and the noises outside had ceased.