“How disgusting!” exclaimed his mother, feeling herself now on firm ground.  “How often have I had to tell you, Timmy, not to go into other people’s kitchens and sculleries?  No nice boy, no little gentleman, would do such a thing.  Of course it was seeing that photograph made you believe you saw Colonel Crofton’s—­”

She stopped abruptly, for she never, if she could help it, used the word “ghost,” or “spirit,” to the child.

“Up to now I’ve always supposed that animals had no souls, Mum, but now I know they have.  I know another thing, too,” but there was a doubtful note in his voice.  “I suppose that ghost-dog hates Mrs. Crofton because she was so unkind to his master.  That’s why he makes the other dogs fly at her, I expect—­or d’you think it’s just because they’re frightened that they do it?”

Janet Tosswill was an unconventional woman, also she was on terms of very close kinship with her strange little son.  Still, she reddened as she drew him closer to her and said:  “Look here, Timmy, I want to tell you something.  I’m sorry now I said what I did say to Jack about Mrs. Crofton.  I ought not to have said it—­I’m ashamed of having said it!  It was told me by someone who is rather fond of repeating disagreeable, sometimes even untrue, things.”

Timmy had also grown very red while his mother was making her little confession.  He took up her hand and squeezed it impulsively, as an older person might have done.

“I think I know who you mean,” he said.  “You mean Miss Pendarth?”

“Yes,” said his mother steadily, “I do mean Miss Pendarth.  I think it quite possible that poor little Mrs. Crofton was never really unkind to Colonel Crofton at all.”

“But you wouldn’t like Jack to marry her, Mum, would you?”

Janet felt a shock of dismay go through her.  There flashed into her mind that sometimes most disturbing text—­“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings....”

“I shouldn’t like it at all,” she exclaimed, “and I think you’re old enough to understand that such a thing would be impossible.  Jack won’t make enough money to keep a wife for years and years.”  She hesitated, and then added, speaking to herself rather than to Timmy, “Still, I hope with all my heart that he won’t get foolish about her.”

“He is foolish about her,” said Timmy positively.  “Even Nanna thinks”—­he waited a moment, then said carefully—­“that he is past praying for.  She said yesterday to Betty that there were some things prayers didn’t help in at all, and that love was one of them.  She says that Jack’s heart has gone out of his own keeping.  Isn’t that a funny idea, Mum?”

“It is a terrible idea,” and, a little to her own surprise, tears rose to Janet Tosswill’s eyes.  Timmy, looking up into her face, felt his heart swell with anger against the person who was causing his mother to look as she was looking now.

He moved away a little bit, as if aware that what he was going to say would not meet with her approval, and then he said in a peculiar voice, a defiant, obstinate voice which she knew well:  “I do wish that Mrs. Crofton would die—­I do hate her so!”