Fear

‘And where’s that?’

‘I don’t know. They don’t seem to know themselves. It’s always from some direction where I’m not looking. Isn’t it strange?’

‘Very! And do they disappear in the same way?’

Monica frowned very seriously and thoughtfully.

‘It’s so quick you can’t tell where they go. When you or Miss Gribbin come in –’

‘They always fly on our approach, of course. But why?’

‘Because they’re dreadfully, dreadfully shy. But not so shy as they were. Perhaps soon they’ll get used to you and not mind at all.’

‘That’s a comforting thought!’ said Everton with a dry laugh.

When Monica had taken her tea and departed, Everton turned to his secretary.

‘You are wrong to blame the child. These creatures of her fancy are perfectly real to her. Her powers of suggestion have been strong enough to force them to some extent on me. The little Parslow girl, being younger and more receptive, actually sees them. It is a clear case of telepathy and auto-suggestion. I have never studied such matters, but I should say that these instances are of some scientific interest.’

Miss Gribbin’s lips tightened and he saw her shiver slightly.

‘Mr Parslow will be angry,’ was all she said.

‘I really cannot help that. Perhaps it is all for the best. If Monica does not like his little daughter they had better not be brought together again.’

For all that, Everton was a little embarrassed when on the following morning he met the Vicar out walking. If the Rev. Parslow knew that his little daughter had left the house so unceremoniously on the preceding day, he would either wish to make an apology, or perhaps require one, according to his view of the situation. Everton did not wish to deal in apologies one way or the other, he did not care to discuss the vagaries of children, and altogether he wanted to have as little to do with Mr Parslow as was conveniently possible. He would have passed with a brief acknowledgement of the Vicar’s existence, but, as he had feared, the Vicar stopped him.

‘I had been meaning to come and see you,’ said the Rev. Parslow.

Everton halted and sighed inaudibly, thinking that perhaps this casual meeting out of doors might after all have saved him something.

‘Yes?’ he said.

‘I will walk in your direction if I may.’ The Vicar eyed him anxiously. ‘There is something you must certainly be told. I don’t know if you guess, or if you already know. If not, I don’t know how you will take it. I really don’t.’

Everton looked puzzled. Whichever child the Vicar might blame for the hurried departure of Gladys, there seemed no cause for such a portentous face and manner.

‘Really?’ he asked. ‘Is it something serious?’

‘I think so, Mr Everton. You are aware, of course, that my little girl left your house yesterday afternoon with some lack of ceremony.’

‘Yes, Monica told us she had gone. If they could not agree it was surely the best thing she could have done, although it may sound inhospitable of me to say it. Excuse me, Mr Parslow, but I hope you are not trying to embroil me in a quarrel between children?’

The Vicar stared in his turn.

‘I am not,’ he said, ‘and I am unaware that there was any quarrel. I was going to ask you to forgive Gladys. There was some excuse for her lack of ceremony. She was badly frightened, poor child.’

‘Then it is my turn to express regret. I had Monica’s version of what happened. Monica has been left a great deal to her own resources, and, having no playmates of her own age, she seems to have invented some.’

‘Ah!’ said the Rev. Parslow, drawing a deep breath.

‘Unfortunately,’ Everton continued, ‘Monica has an uncomfortable gift for impressing her fancies on other people. I have often thought I felt the presence of children about the house, and so, I am almost sure, has Miss Gribbin. I am afraid that when your little girl came to play with her yesterday afternoon, Monica scared her by introducing her invisible “friends” and by talking to imaginary and therefore invisible little girls.’

The Vicar laid a hand on Everton’s arm.

‘There is something more in it than that. Gladys is not an imaginative child; she is, indeed, a practical little person. I have never yet known her to tell me a lie. What would you say, Mr Everton, if I were to tell you that Gladys positively asserts that she saw those other children?’

Something like a cold draught went through Everton. An ugly suspicion, vague and almost shapeless, began to move in dim recesses of his mind. He tried to shake himself free of it, to smile and to speak lightly.