The Brightener

								

out before I had a single proposal worth accepting, but an awful thing
happened at the Abbey.
Grandmother had to keep on the rented town house, for patriotic motives,
no matter what the expense, because she had turned it into an
ouvroir for the making of hospital supplies. She directed the work
herself, and I and Shelagh Leigh (Shelagh was just out of the schoolroom
then) and lots of other girls slaved seven hours a day. Suddenly, just
when we'd had a big "hurry order" for pneumonia jackets, there was a
shortage of material. But Grandmother wasn't a woman to be conquered by
shortages! She remembered a hundred yards of bargain stuff she'd bought
to be used for new dust-sheets at the Abbey; and as all the servants but
two were discharged when we left for town, the sheets had never been
made up.
She could not be spared for a day, but I could. By this time I was
nineteen, and felt fifty in wisdom, as all girls do, since the war.
Grandmother was old-fashioned in some ways, but new-fashioned in others,
so she ordered me off to Courtenaye Abbey by myself to unlock the room
where the bundle had been put. Train service was not good, and I would
have to stay the night; but she wired to old Barlow and his wife--once
lodge-keepers, now trusted guardians of the house. She told Mrs. Barlow
(a pretty old Devonshire Thing, like peaches and cream, called by me
"Barley") to get my old room ready; and Barlow was to meet me at the
train. At the last moment, however, Shelagh Leigh decided to go with me;
and if we had guessed it, this was to turn out one of the most important
decisions of her life. Barlow met us, of course; and how he had changed
since last I'd seen his comfortable face! I expected him to be charmed
with the sight of me, if not of Shelagh, for I was always a favourite
with Barl and Barley; but the poor man was absent-minded and queer. When
a stuffy station-cab from Courtenaye Coombe had rattled us to the
shut-up Abbey, I went at once to the housekeeper's room and had a
heart-to-heart talk with the Barlows. It seemed that the police had been
to the house and "run all through it," because of reports that lights
had flashed from the upper windows out to sea at night--"signals to
submarines!"
Nothing suspicious was found, however, and the police made it clear that
they considered the Barlows themselves above reproach. Good people, they
were, with twin nephews from Australia fighting in the war! Indeed, an
inspector had actually apologized for the visit, saying that the police
had pooh-poohed the reports at first. They had paid no attention until
"the story was all over the village"; and there are not enough miles
between Courtenaye Abbey and Plymouth Dockyard for even the rankest
rumours to be disregarded long.
Barley was convinced that one of our ghosts had been waked up by the
war--the ghost of a young girl burned to death, who now and then rushes