Dial a Ghost by Eva Ibbotson Page B

11.40 drew up at Platform Three.
    The next part of the journey was slow and the scenery wild and beautiful. They travelled through heather-clad hills and valleys with brown rushing rivers and little copses of wind-tossed trees. Both the children, as they looked out of the window, were lost in dreams. Eric imagined himself camping alone by a stream, his tent perfectly pitched, his kettle hissing over the fire which he had lit with a single match as Scouts have learnt to do. He would be whittling a stick with his lethal knife and there she would be, Cynthia Harbottle herself, stumbling into his camp, soaked to the skin and terrified.
    ‘Eric,’ she would say, ‘Eric, I am lost, save me, help me and I promise I will never look at an American soldier again.’
    Addie’s dreams were different. She was watching the hillsides covered with shaggy, black-faced sheep. Surely in a place where there were so many of these animals, just one would pass on and become a ghost? She had always wanted a phantom sheep; she was absolutely sure she could train it to sit, or even to fetch a ball she threw for it. Sheep were much cleverer than people realized. They had to be or Jesus would not have preached about them so much.
    Grandma’s thoughts were in the past. She was worried about Mr Hofmann in the bunion shop. He was such a clever man, a German professor who had been a teacher in the university before he fell into the canal from thinking about poetry instead of looking where he was going. But he was not very strong-minded. Every time he woke and saw a picture of a stomach he got a tummy ache and every time he saw an enamel bowl, he wanted to cough into it, and he was working himself into a dreadful pother.
    ‘I shouldn’t have left him,’ thought Grandma.
    At Freshford Junction the last part of their journey began.
    You must now take the bus to Troughton-in-the-Wold, which leaves from the first stand opposite the station. Go to the terminus at the Horse and Hounds, cross the road, and make your way along the lane which leads uphill between clumps of firs.
    Once again, everything went like clockwork. They found the lane and glided along it in the fading light. Then suddenly their way was blocked.
    Uncle Henry opened the folder once more.
    After two kilometres you will find yourself in front of a high gate with a pair of griffons on the pillars. When you reach that, your journey is over.
    ‘This is it then,’ he said. ‘No doubt about it. This is the place.’
    It was a shock. Their new home was not at all what they expected. Jagged battlements glowed black against a crimson sunset, writhing statues led up to the great front door – and the griffons’ claws rested on a shield with the words ‘I Set My Foot Upon my
    Enemies’ carved into the stone.
    Grandma was the first to speak.
    ‘I won’t curtsy,’ she said. ‘Let’s get that clear. It may be grand but I won’t curtsy to nobody.’
    She had been very poor when she was young and forced to go and work as a housemaid in a big house, and it had made her very cross with anyone who was a snob and ordered people about.
    ‘No, of course not, Grandma,’ said Maud. ‘Who ever heard of a curtsying ghost?’ But she herself was very troubled. ‘Henry, are you sure it’s us they want? I mean... shouldn’t we be more... you know... skeletal and headless? Won’t they expect hollow rap-pings and muffled moans... and that sort of thing?’
    through my muffler, Ma,’ said Eric. But he was only trying for a joke. The little scarves that Scouts wear round their necks are not at all suitable for moaning through.
    The only person who wasn’t in the least put out was Adopta.
    ‘I can’t see what the fuss is about,’ she said. ‘It’s just a house with roofs and windows like any other’ – and as she spoke Aunt Maud wondered yet again what Addie’s life had been before she came to them.
    But Uncle Henry now read out the last of the instructions.
    You are asked to wait till