fluttering shape by the square opening in the outer wall. He stopped on
the spot, and his heart almost stopped, too--but only for a moment.
Driven by some necessity he could not explain to himself, he picked
himself together and pushed on, only to find that the intimidating
spectre consisted of some white clothing hung for drying on the iron rod
of the shutter and kept moving by a high wind. It was a lesson that went
right home and stuck.

During that one moment of hesitation, the idea of a ghost tried to take
form in his more or less paralysed consciousness. He had read of ghosts,
and overheard stories told by the servant girls in apparent good faith,
and that whitish, almost luminous thing in front of him, stirring
restlessly with a faint hissing sound, looked and acted the part of a
ghost to perfection. But the idea was rejected before it had taken clear
shape and without any reasoning, instinctively, automatically. His
father always became scornful at the mere mention of ghosts, and that
settled it.

When it was all over, and he was safe within the kitchen door once more,
he told no one what had happened. He thought that, in spite of his
initial scare, he had acted decidedly well, and he was eager for
approval, but he was kept from telling by an uneasy feeling that his
father would laugh at him if he did.



XVI

The boy's timidity took quite different forms. One day the whole family
was astir. His parents had in some way obtained tickets to that