Page 15 - An Australian Lassie

CHAPTER IV

GHOSTS

Betty's plan was beautifully simple. As Cyril said, he could easily have thought of it himself. Tt was nothing
more than to effect a reconcilement between their grandfather and their mother, and the means to bring it
about was to be "ghosts."

"Mother said he was superstitious," said Betty; "she says all sailors are. He doesn't like omens and things,
mother says. What we want to do is to give him a severe fright."

She had thought out alone all the details of her plan, helped only by a few incidental words of her mother's.
The story of baby Dorothea being taken to melt a father's heart, for instance, had fired Betty with the resolve
to try what baby Nancy could do in that direction.

Cyril was more matter-of-fact.

"Tf he wouldn't forgive mother when she took Dot, he's not very likely to soften to you with Baby," he said.

But Betty had counted that risk too.

"You forget he's ever so many years older," she said. "He's an old man now, and it's quite time he woke up.
T've been thinking of everything we've to do and everything we've to say."

"Ghosts don't talk," said Cyril.

"They moan," replied Betty; "and they do talk. Tn Lady Anne's Causeway there's a ghost, and it speaks in
sepulchral tones and says: 'Come hither, come hither to my home; thy time is come.'"

The little girl's eyes were shining; the very thought of that other ghost's "sepulchral" tones gave her a thrill
down her back and lifted her out of herself. Of all her plots and plans, and they were many and various, there
was not one to compare in magnitude with this. Tn her thoughts she became a ghost, straightway. She glided
about the house, her lips moved but gave no sound, her eyes shone. Underneath the exhilaration, that her
ghostly feelings gave, was the smooth sense of being about to do a great deed that would benefit every
one--Cyril, her mother, her father, Dot, every one. Tears glistened in her eyes as she thought of the meeting
between her grandfather and her mother, and beheld in fancy her pretty mother clasped at last in the
sea-captain's arms.

Throughout that Saturday afternoon she made her preparations, only now and then giving Cyril a trifling
explanation. He was much relieved to hear he would not be expected to take any active part in the
proceedings, only to be at hand, in hiding, to help his ghostly sister carry the baby.

Tea was always an early meal at The Gunyah, that Mr. Bruce might have a long evening at his writing, and
the children at their home lessons.

To-night, after the last cup and saucer had been washed and dried by Betty and put away by Dot, and after the
baby, had been tucked into her little crib, by Betty again, a long pleasant evening seemed to stretch before
every one.

Mr. Bruce brought out My Study Windows, and declared he had "broken up" till Monday. Mrs. Bruce opened a
certain exercise book her eldest daughter had given her, imploring secrecy, and Dot sat down to the piano and
wandered stumblingly into Mendelssohn's Duetto. The twins, to every one's entire satisfaction, "slipped