but you have made that Or-Mist-on affair out of your own head: isn't that true, Bessie?"
"I am not bound to answer unbelievers, John."
"Besides," said John, "Ormiston is far; liker French than Saxon."
"Mr. Parker," said Bessie, "there was an abbot John of Cakeholy who flourished in the thirteenth century: his ghost is said to revisit its old habitation, or rather the place where it stood. I should like to meet it and have a talk over things; it would be very interesting."
"Would you not be terrified?" asked Mrs. Parker.
"If I saw what I believed to be a ghost, I should die of terror," said Bessie; "especially if I was alone and it was the dead of night; but I have no faith whatever in ghosts."
"It is getting rather chilly," said Mrs. Parker.
"Perhaps we had better go down now, then," Miss Ormiston said. "Mr. Forrester, would you come out of your brown study and let us pass?"
"Certainly. I'll see you all safe off the battlements. I wasn't in a brown study: I was in a mist."
"Then take care: people in a mist always think they are going the right way when they are going directly wrong."
"If I only knew the right way!" he said.
"That's true, Mr. Forrester," said Mrs. Parker. "If we only knew the right way; and people tell you to be guided by Providence, but I say I never know when it is Providence and when it is myself;" and she threaded her way down the narrow stairs, followed by the rest of the party.
III
The dining-room, with its low roof, its crimson walls, dark furniture and handsome fire (the fires at Cockhoolet were always handsome: Bessie was the architect and superintended the building herself; they never looked harum-scarum nor meaningless nor thoughtless, nor as if they were not meant to burn; they combined taste, comfort, and, as a consequence, economy; everything tasteful and comfortable is in the long run economical), its table-cloth, glistening like the summit of the Alps and laden with good things, looked a place where people even not in love with each other might, unless naturally perverse, be very happy.
Mrs. Parker, being from town, was in raptures with every country eatable, especially the scones, which she found were manufactured by Miss Ormiston herself.
"And have they," asked Mr. Parker, "the sustaining power that the cakes made here of old had?"
"If you eat enough of them you may get to Edinburgh to-night before you are very hungry," said John.
"The abbey cakes were unleavened," Bessie explained, "which these are not, so that they are less substantial fare."
"What do you raise them with?" asked Mrs. Parker.
"Butter, milk and carbonate of soda," said Miss Ormiston.
"We call Bessie a doctor of the Carbon," said John: "she makes very good scones, although you would hardly go from here to Canterbury on the strength of one of them."
"Mr. Forrester, are you dull?" asked Jessie: "you are not saying anything."
"I am too busy eating the holy cakes, Jessie," said Edwin: "your sister is a master in her art."
"I say," Jessie went on, "are you ever dull at home? When I told Bessie that you had come she was surprised, and said that you must surely be dull at home. I am sorry for you if you are: you should come here oftener—we are never dull here."
"Perhaps," said Edwin, "your sister thinks I come too often, as it is."
Bessie was so deeply engaged pressing Mr. Parker to eat strawberry jam, with cheeks the color of the fruit, that of course she could not have heard what her sister had been saying.
"Oh no, I don't think she thinks that at all," Jessie said: "we never think any one can come too often. Bessie, can Mr. Forrester come too often?"
But still Miss Ormiston was so occupied with Mr. Parker that she did not hear.
And Mrs. Parker said, "It is a most intensely interesting old place, this: do not people come to look at it?"
"Oh yes," replied Bessie, "especially in summer: we generally have several parties every week. One of the servants takes them over the castle—grand people often, with carriages and livery servants."
"Do you not keep a book for them to write their names in?"
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