Are you afraid?

"Are you afraid of spirits?" Clio persisted. She wanted to get a bit of terror into the conversation somehow.

"No child, I'm not. How could you be afraid of someone's spirit? A spirit is a friendly thing. It's the life that was in them once - the memory of it - that stays around a place .. "

This was more promising. "Are there spirits round here, round the lake?"

"Of course there are - the people who loved the place and who lived here."

"And died here?"

"And died here, of course."

"Would Bridie Daly's spirit be here?"

"Birdie Daly?"

"The woman who said 'Look in the reeds.' The woman who was going to have a baby without being married. " Clio sounded too eager, too gossipy, for Sister Madeleine.

She looked at them thoughtfully. "And are you girls having a party for Hallowe'en?" she asked.

Kit said nothing.

Clio grumbled "Kit was going to have one and then it was all cancelled."

"I only said I might." Kit was mutinous.

"Well, it's stupid to say you might and then give no explanation." Clio said.

Sister Madeleine looked at Kit sympathetically. The child was distressed about something. The Hallowe'en party was not the right distraction to have made. "Have you ever seem a tame fox?" she asked them, with the air of a conspirator.

"You can't have a tame fox, can you?" Clio knew everything.

"Well, you can't have one that you'd trust with the ducklings and the chickens." Sister Madeleine agreed. "But I have a lovely little fellow I could show you. He's in a box in my bedroom. I can't let him out but you can come in with me and see."

Her bedroom! The girls looked at each other in delight.