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Page:More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary.djvu/261

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MR. HUMPHREYS INHERITANCE
251

to shut up the one in the garden. Not long afterwards he went to bed.

The next day brought a morning’s hard work with Mr. Cooper who, if exuberant in language, had the business of the estate at his fingers’ ends. He was very breezy this morning, Mr. Cooper was: had not forgotten the order to clear out the maze—the work was going on at that moment: his girl was on the tentacles of expectation about it. He also hoped that Humphreys had slept the sleep of the just, and that we should be favoured with a continuance of this congenial weather. At luncheon he enlarged on the pictures in the dining-room, and pointed out the portrait of the constructor of the temple and the maze. Humphreys examined this with considerable interest. It was the work of an Italian, and had been painted when old Mr. Wilson was visiting Rome as a young man. (There was, indeed, a view of the Colosseum in the background.) A pale thin face and large eyes were the characteristic features. In the hand was a partially unfolded