“Peter’s ghost doesn’t,” observed Master Bertram.  “He came in the morning.”

“Did he steal anything?” inquired Brandon, still desirous, it seemed, to throw dirt at the great idea.

“Oh no, he didn’t steal,” said the other little boy, “that’s not what they’re for.”

“What did he say then?”

“He gave a deep sigh, but he didn’t say nothink.”

“Ghosts,” said Bertie, following up his brother’s speech as one who had full information—­“ghosts are not birds, they don’t come to lay eggs for you, or to be of any use at all.  They come for you to be afraid of.  Didn’t you know that, father?”

John was too much vexed to answer, and Peter’s chance from that moment of ever entering those doors again was not worth a rush.

“But you needn’t mind, father dear,” said Janie, the eldest child present, “Peter’s ghost won’t come here.  It doesn’t belong to ‘grand,’ or to any of us.  Its name was Melcombe, and it came from the sea, that they might know it was dead.”  John and Brandon looked at one another.  The information was far too circumstantial to be forgotten by the children, who continued their confidences now without any more irreverent interruptions.  “Mrs. Melcombe gave Peter four half-crowns to give to nurse, and he had to say ’Thank you, nurse, for your kindness to me;’ but nurse wasn’t kind, she didn’t like Peter, and she slapped him several times.”

“And Mrs. Melcombe gave some more shillings to Maria,” said Bertie.

“Like the garden slug,” observed Brandon, “leaving a trail of silver behind her.”

The said Maria, who was their little nursemaid, now came in to fetch away the children.

“Isn’t this provoking,” exclaimed John Mortimer, when they were gone.  “I had no notion that child had been neglected and left to pick up these pernicious superstitions, though I never liked his mother from the first moment I set my eyes on her.”

“Why did you ask her to stay at your house then?” said Brandon, laughing.

“Giles, you know as well as I do.”

Thereupon, having finished their breakfast, they set forth to walk to the town, arguing together on some subject that interested them till they reached the bank.

Behind it, in a comfortable room fitted up with library tables, leather chairs, and cases for books and papers, sat old Augustus Mortimer.  “Grand,” as he was always called by his descendants, that being easier to say than his full title of grandfather; and if John Mortimer had not taken Brandon into this room to see him, the talk about the ghost might have faded away altogether from the mind of the latter.

As it was, Grand asked after the little ones, and Brandon, standing on the rug and looking down on the fine stern features and white head, began to give him a graphic account of what little Peter Melcombe had been teaching them, John Mortimer, while he unlocked his desk and sorted out certain papers, now and then adding a touch or two in mimicry of his children’s little voices.