Comethup closed the book, but kept a finger between the leaves. "It's very late," he urged, "and it'll soon be getting dark."
Brian stood with his hands on the window sill, impatiently kicking at the house wall. "You're afraid," he said, looking up at Comethup.
Comethup shook his head, but his drawn brows showed anxiety. "No, I'm not afraid," he said, slowly. "But I'd rather wait until to-morrow, if you want to see the house."
"No one ever goes to a house that's haunted in the daytime," said Brian. "I'm going now."
"It's nicer in the daytime," urged Comethup, getting one leg down from the window seat and dangling it irresolutely. "But I'll come if you like."
"Come along then," cried the other. "You're so slow; you can't make up your mind quickly, as I do."
Comethup knew that the reproach was justified, and felt humbled accordingly. He was not altogether so happy in this adventure as he had been in all those which had preceded it. In the first place, he had to steal out of the house into the mysterious summer evening, being careful that no one saw him. His father was in church practising; he could hear the slow droning of the organ, like the hum of a gigantic tired insect going to sleep with the rest of the world. Comethup wished that he had gone into the church with his father, and sat there, out of the way of temptation such as this.
The evening was warm and heavy, and a hundred sweet odours came from the gardens which fringed the road. Brian talked valiantly and loudly as they went along of how foolish it was to be afraid of anything, just because it happened to be dark, and of a hundred other matters tending to keep up his ebbing courage. Comethup was silent, doggedly determined to go through with the business, now that he had embarked upon it, and with a plaintive hope in his heart that it might not be so dreadful, after all.
Curiously enough, that part of the outskirts of the town in which the house lay seemed always to be darker and more sombre-looking than any other. All the houses about there were very old, with high walls and tall, rustling old trees; with paths in their gardens which seemed always full of dead leaves and weeds at all times of the year. And that particular house was the most sombre and dismal-looking of them all. It had originally been a very fine house; there were the remains of carvings on the stone pillars which supported the gates. But everything was in decay; one of the great gates hung merely by one hinge, and swayed perilously when it was touched; the other stood permanently ajar.