he was like, then there is nothing more to say."

"I want to be sure," he repeated obstinately.

"But how absurd, Timmy! Why should you want to know about a poor old
gentleman who is dead, and of whom you are not likely ever to hear
anything? I have often told you how horrid it is to be inquisitive."

Timmy paused over that remark. "I want to know," he said in a low
mumbling voice, "because I think I have seen him." He did not look up at
his mother as he spoke. With the forefinger of his right hand he began
tracing an imaginary pattern on the blue serge skirt which covered her
knee.

She looked around apprehensively. Yes, the door was shut. She remembered
that Dr. O'Farrell had told her never to encourage the child's
confidences, but, on the other hand, never to check them.

"I first saw him the evening she came to supper," Timmy mumbled. "They
were walking together down the avenue. I thought he was a real old
gentleman. There was a dog with him, a terrier exactly like Flick, only a
little bigger. Of course I thought it was a real dog too. But now I know
that it wasn't. I know now that it was a ghost-dog. It is _that_ dog,
Mum, that frightens the other dogs who meet them--not herself, as she's
come to think."

"Oh, Timmy,"--Janet felt acutely uncomfortable--"you know I cannot bear
to think that such things really happen to you. If you really think them
I'd rather know, but I'd so much rather, dear boy, that you didn't think
them."

But Timmy was absorbed in what he was saying. "I know now that it was
Colonel Crofton," he went on, "because I've seen an old photograph of
him, Mum. Mrs. Crofton brought a tin box full of papers with her, and
there were some old photographs in it. There was one of an officer in
uniform, and it had written across it, 'Yours sincerely, Cecil Crofton.'
She tore it up the day after she came here, and threw it in the
waste-paper basket, but her cook took it out of the dustbin, and
that's how I saw it."

"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