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But meseems I have in this digression transgressed in the matter o’ length; therefore, to return to the bare facts.

It was on the subject of this ghost that my lord and the Lady Margaret had disagreed. My lord, being a flighty lad, although a marvellous fine scholar and well-disposed, did agree with my wife in the matter of the ghost; while my lady was of a like mind with myself.

It doth seem but yesterday that she came to me as I was training the woodbine o’er the arbor that led to her little garden, and put her white hand on my shoulder. (My lady was never one for wearing gloves, yet the sun seemed no more to think o’ scorching her fair hands than the leaves of a day-lily.) She comes to me and lays her hand on my shoulder, and her long eyes they laugh at me out of the shadow of her hat; but her mouth is grave as though I were a corse.

Quoth she:

“Butter, dost thou believe in this ghost?”

“Nay, my lady,” answered I, hoping to shift her to better soil; “I ne’er meddle with ghosts or goblins. Why, an there be such things, should they wish me harm? O’ my word, my brain is no more troubled with ghosts, black or white, than our gracious Queen’s”–here I doffed my cap–“is with snails and slugs;” and here I plucked a slug from a vine-leaf and set my heel on’t.

“Nay, nay!” quoth she, a-shutting of her white eyelids so tight that all the long black hairs on them stood straight out, like the fringe on Marian’s Sunday mantle in a high wind. “Butter! thou nasty man!”

“Why–for how dost thou mean, my lady?” quoth I.

“Why, for mashing that poor beast to a pap.” And then a-holding of her hand level below her eyes, so that she might not discern the ground, “Is he dead?” quoth she.

“Dead?” asked I, for I was somewhat puzzled in my mind.

“Ay, the slug; is he dead?”

“That he is, verily,” said I; for in truth he was naught but a jelly, and therewith I drew a pebble over him with my foot, that the sight o’ his misfortune should not disturb her tender heart.

“How if I were to crush you ‘neath my heel, Master Butter?” quoth she at last, having peered about for the sight she dreaded, and, not seeing it, returning to her discourse. “How wouldst thou like that, excellent Master Butter?” But somehow, as I looked at her foot, my mouth, for all I could do, went into a smile. For though she was as fine a maiden as any in all Warwickshire, her foot, methinks, was of so dainty a make ‘twould scarce have dealt death to a rose.

“But truly, my lady,” continued I, seeing that she was making up a face at me, “thou knowest I’ve naught in common with ghosts.”

“Ay,” quoth she. “And thou knowest the like of me. But”–and here stops she, with the slyest tip of her frowzed curls towards the house–“thou knowest also this, Butter, that his lordship, my brother, thinks as doth Marian, thy wife, and that therein we four cannot agree.”

So I look at my hoe-handle, and say I, “My lady, it is known to me.”

“Well, now, Butter,” she goes on, “thou most wise, most excellent, most cunning, most delectable of Butters, I have concocted a plan. I’ fecks, Butter” (for my lady, like her Majesty the Queen, was somewhat given to swearing, though more modest oaths, as should become a subject)–“I’ fecks, Butter,” saith she, “’tis a most lustick plot. But I would not thy mome heard us;” and with that she makes me send away Joe, the under-gardener. He being gone, she whispers in my ear how she hath plotted to fright his lordship and Marian into very convulsions of further conviction, by appearing to them at the door o’ the blue room in her night-gown, with a taper in her hand and her face chalked. What she desired o’ me was, that I should come to the blue room with her, and there remain while she played off this pretty fantasy on my lord and Marian.