"You foolish boy," she said, "why don't you beg Mr. Dempster's pardon, and hold your tongue about the ghost?"
"Eh!--but I saw t' ghaist," persisted Jacob Postlethwaite, with a stare of terror and a burst of tears.
"Stuff and nonsense! You saw nothing of the kind. Ghost indeed! What ghost----"
"I beg your pardon, Miss Halcombe," interposed the schoolmaster a little uneasily--"but I think you had better not question the boy. The obstinate folly of his story is beyond all belief; and you might lead him into ignorantly----"
"Ignorantly what?" inquired Miss Halcombe sharply.
"Ignorantly shocking your feelings," said Mr. Dempster, looking very much discomposed.
"Upon my word, Mr. Dempster, you pay my feelings a great compliment in thinking them weak enough to be shocked by such an urchin as that!" She turned with an air of satirical defiance to little Jacob, and began to question him directly. "Come!" she said, "I mean to know all about this. You naughty boy, when did you see the ghost?"
"Yestere'en, at the gloaming," replied Jacob.
"Oh! you saw it yesterday evening, in the twilight? And what was it like?"
"Arl in white--as a ghaist should be," answered the ghost-seer, with a confidence beyond his years.
"And where was it?"
"Away yander, in t' kirkyard--where a ghaist ought to be."
"As a 'ghaist' should be--where a 'ghaist' ought to be--why, you little fool, you talk as if the manners and customs of ghosts had been familiar to you from your infancy! You have got your story at your fingers' ends, at any rate. I suppose I shall hear next that you can actually tell me whose ghost it was?"
"Eh! but I just can," replied Jacob, nodding his head with an air of gloomy triumph.
Mr. Dempster had already tried several times to speak while Miss Halcombe was examining his pupil, and he now interposed resolutely enough to make himself heard.
"Excuse me, Miss Halcombe," he said, "if I venture to say that you are only encouraging the boy by asking him these questions."
"I will merely ask one more, Mr. Dempster, and then I shall be quite satisfied. Well," she continued, turning to the boy, "and whose ghost was it?"
"T' ghaist of Mistress Fairlie," answered Jacob in a whisper.
The effect which this extraordinary reply produced on Miss Halcombe fully justified the anxiety which the schoolmaster had shown to prevent her from hearing it. Her face crimsoned with indignation--she turned upon little Jacob with an angry suddenness which terrified him into a fresh burst of tears--opened her lips to speak to him--then controlled herself, and addressed the master instead of the boy.