not as blind or
deaf as you seem to suppose. You're putting silly ideas into juniors'
heads. Whoever heard of the Abbey being haunted? Such stuff! You'll be
afraid of your own shadows next. Do try to be more strong-minded! I
really shouldn't have expected----"

Geraldine stopped, because something like a whirlwind suddenly descended
the stairs and stampeded towards them. It resolved itself into
Diana--Diana with scarlet cheeks, shining eyes, and face simply bubbling
over with excitement.

"Hallo! I say!" she jodelled, "What _do_ you think?" Then she saw
Geraldine, and halted dead.

"Come here!" commanded the head girl. "I want to talk to you too about
this absurd spook scare. It's mostly among you intermediates, and the
sooner you get it out of your silly heads the better. Pity you can't
find something more sensible to talk about. Why don't you read, and fill
up your empty brains? There are heaps of good books in the library, if
you'd only get them out. You spend all your spare time gossiping."

"We _do_ read!" retorted Diana, taking up the cudgels for the maligned
intermediates. "I've just read _The Monastery_, and that's all about a
ghost called 'The White Lady of Avenel'. It's _grand_ where she rides
the sacristan's mule down the river and sings:

'Merrily swim we; the moon shines bright.
Good luck to your fishing! Whom watch ye to-night?'

There are heaps and loads of ghost tales in the guide book and in
Chadwick's _Northern Antiquities_, and those are all books Miss Todd
_told_ me I might read. She said they were 'educational'."

"She didn't mean you to take the ghosts seriously, though, any more than
you'd believe in the gods of Greece because you were learning classical
literature. Why, you'll tell me next that you expect to see the
fairies."

"I'm not sure that I don't!"

"Then you're a bigger goose than I thought you. Really, at fourteen! I'm
astonished at all of you. You don't see _me_ running squealing away from
supposed ghosts. Don't let me catch you being such little idiots again."

Having finished her harangue, and having, as she thought, thoroughly
squashed the folly of the intermediates, Geraldine proceeded on her way,
happily oblivious of the faces they were pulling behind her back.

"I'd like to see _her_ squeal and run," grunted Jess.

[Illustration: ITS COWL FELL BACK, AND DISCLOSED A WELL-KNOWN AND
DECIDEDLY MIRTHFUL COUNTENANCE]

"So should I," agreed Sadie. "She's always _very