“Yes, ghosts, William.”

Her air of deference flattered him.  She evidently expected great things of him.  Great things she should have.  At the best of times with William imagination was stronger than cold facts.

He gave a short laugh.

“Oh, ghosts!  Yes, I’ve seen some of ’em.  I guess I have!”

Her face lit up.

“Will you tell me some of your experiences, William?” she said, humbly.

“Well,” said William, loftily, “you won’t go talkin’ about it, will you?”

“Oh, no.”

“Well, I’ve seen ’em, you know.  Chains an’ all.  And skeletons.  And ghostly arms beckonin’ an’ all that.”

William was enjoying himself.  He walked with a swagger.  He almost believed what he said.  She gasped.

“Oh, go on!” she said.  “Tell me all.”

He went on.  He soared aloft on the wings of imagination, his hands in his pockets, his freckled face puckered up in frowning mental effort.  He certainly enjoyed himself.

“If only some of it could happen to me,” breathed his confidante.  “Does it come to you at nights, William?”

“Yes,” nodded William.  “Nights mostly.”

“I shall—­watch to-night,” said Cousin Mildred.  “And you say the house is old?”

“Awful old,” said William, reassuringly.

Her attitude to William was a relief to the rest of the family.  Visitors sometimes objected to William.

“She seems to have almost taken to William,” said his mother, with a note of unflattering incredulity in her voice.

William was pleased yet embarrassed by her attentions.  It was a strange experience to him to be accepted by a grown-up as a fellow-being.  She talked to him with interest and a certain humility, she bought him sweets and seemed pleased that he accepted them, she went for walks with him, and evidently took his constrained silence for the silence of depth and wisdom.

Beneath his embarrassment he was certainly pleased and flattered.  She seemed to prefer his company to that of Ethel.  That was one in the eye for Ethel.  But he felt that something was expected from him in return for all this kindness and attention.  William was a sportsman.  He decided to supply it.  He took a book of ghost stories from the juvenile library at school, and read them in the privacy of his room at night.  Many were the thrilling adventures which he had to tell to Cousin Mildred in the morning.  Cousin Mildred’s bump of credulity was a large one.  She supplied him with sweets on a generous scale.  She listened to him with awe and wonder.

“William ... you are one of the elect, the chosen,” she said, “one of those whose spirits can break down the barrier between the unseen world and ours with ease.”  And always she sighed and stroked back her thin locks, sadly.  “Oh, how I wish that some experience would happen to me!”