CH THERE."]

* * * * *

[Illustration: "OH, MUMMY, WILL YOU GET THE TWOPENCE BACK?"]

* * * * *

THE ROOM AT THE BACK.

[A story of the supernatural, which should not be read late at night by
persons of weak nerves.]

Outwardly, "Chatholme" was as all the other villas in Dunmoral Avenue,
which were just detached enough to allow the butcher's boy to squeeze
himself and his basket--and perhaps the cook--between any two of them, and
differed from each other in nothing but names, numbers and window-curtains.

And the interior of the house, when the Pottigrews took possession of it,
seemed equally commonplace. There is no need to show you all over it, but
if you intend to peruse this narrative, in spite of the warning above, it
is desirable that you should at least inspect the ground-floor.

On one side of the hall, which was faintly illumined in the daytime by a
fanlight, was the drawing-room; on the other side was the dining-room, and
behind the dining-room was a smaller room with a French-window looking on
to the back-garden, which probably was described by the house-agents as the
"morning-room," but was by Mr. Pottigrew designated his "study."

Prosaic enough, you will say. And yet there was that about the ground-floor
of "Chatholme" which was anything but matter-of-fact, as the Pottigrews
began to discover before they had been in residence many days.

Mrs. Pottigrew was the first to "sense" something out of the ordinary. She
was of Manx origin, and therefore peculiarly sensitive to "influences;" one
of those uncomfortable people who cannot visit such places as Hampton Court
or the Tower without vibrating like harp-strings.

Mr. Pottigrew, however, was of the duller fibre of which cyclists rather
than psychists are made; and when, on his return from the City one
afternoon, his wife tried to get him to appreciate a certain eeriness in
the atmosphere of the new home, he sniffed it dutifully, and declared that
he could detect nothing but a confounded smell of onions.

"That's because they _won't_ remember to shut the kitchen door," Mrs.
Pottigrew explained. "But--"

"Well, it can't be the drains, because they've just been tested," said Mr.
Pottigrew impatiently. And, like a stout materialist, he muttered,
"Imagination!" as he strolled away to the sanctuary of his study, little
guessing how his own imagination was about to be stimulated.

(L