ghosts.'

'Ghosts!' said my mother severely, 'what has put such nonsense into
your head?'

Nevertheless Emily made up her mind that Chantry House would be
another Melrose, and went about repeating the moonlight scene in the
Lay of the Last Minstrel whenever she thought no one was there to
laugh at her.

My father and Griffith returned with the good news that there was no
mistake. Chantry House was really his own, with the estate
belonging to it, reckoned at 5000 pounds a year, exclusive of a
handsome provision to Miss Selby, the niece of the late Mrs.
Winslow, a spinster of a certain age, who had lived with her uncle,
and now proposed to remove to Bath. Mr. Winslow had, it appeared,
lost his only son as a schoolboy, and his daughters, like their
mother, had been consumptive. He had always been resolved that the
estate should continue in the family; but reluctance to see any one
take his son's place had withheld him from making any advances to my
father; and for several years past he had been in broken health with
failing faculties.

Of course there was much elation. Griff described as charming the
place, perched on the southern slope of a wooded hill, with a broad
fertile valley lying spread out before it, and the woods behind
affording every promise of sport. The house, my father said, was
good, odd and irregular, built at different times, but quite
habitable, and with plenty of furniture, though he opined that mamma
would think it needed modernising, to which she replied that our