The Boggart Read Online Free

the cabin. I’ve got meetings — and the grant proposals to write — and no, we’re not rich at all, Mr. Maconochie says the castle’s falling down. Nobody in their right mind will want to buy it.”
    â€œBuy it?” said Jessup, horrified. “You’ve inherited our ancestral home! You surely don’t want to sell it already!”
    Their father looked even more worried. “Well, that’s the trouble,” he said unhappily. “No, I don’t.”
    â€œT HEN YOU MUSTN’T, ” Maggie said firmly. “We’ll manage. Rent out the deer-hunting rights, or something.”
    â€œThere’s no land,” Robert said. “Just the castle.”
    â€œFalling down,” added Emily.
    They were all sitting in the late sunshine on the back steps of Maggie’s shop, eating take-out Chinese food with chopsticks out of leaky cardboard cartons. Maggie’s partner, a chubby, grey-haired lady known to the children as Aunt Jen, sat with them, spooning up yogurt. Aunt Jen was always on a diet, which never seemed to have any effect. She and Maggie were working late, taking inventory (or as Jen described it, “counting the stuff”), so Robert, Emily, and Jessup had brought them dinner and the news.
    â€œThis guy was your great-uncle?” Aunt Jen said, licking her spoon hungrily. “He must have been ancient.”
    â€œAnd lonely,” Robert said. “He lived there all on his own, Mr. Maconochie said. No wife, no children, no anyone. One sister, but she ran away to Edinburgh when she was young and married someone from the wrong clan, so that was the last he heard of her. He never even mentioned her, except in his will. Mr. Maconochie had to track her down — and he found she emigrated to Canada in 1923, with her husband and three-year-old daughter.”
    â€œGrannie!” cried Emily, entranced. She could faintly remember her grandmother, as a fragrant, soft-cheeked presence who had died when she was five.
    â€œThe three-year-old, yes. My mom. Mary Campbell, who married Peter Volnik from Estonia.”
    â€œAlmost as romantic as her Canadian son marrying an English girl from Manchester,” said Maggie in her lingering English accent, smiling at her husband. Robert leaned sideways behind Jessup, and kissed her on the ear.
    â€œYou’re dripping shrimp foo young down my neck,” Jessup said coldly.
    â€œAnd in the third generation, romance dies,” Robert said, sitting back. “Pass the fried rice, Jessup.”
    Aunt Jen dug her spoon into the fried rice as it went by. She said, “Whether or not you keep this ancestral pile, you know, you do have to go over there.”
    Robert groaned. “I can’t afford to!”
    â€œFares are getting lower, this time of year.”
    â€œIt’s the time I can’t afford. Money’s no problem, for once — Mr. Mac said the estate could pay.”
    â€œThat means you, if it’s your estate.”
    â€œOh well,” Robert said.
    Aunt Jen stole another spoonful of rice. “Maggie should go with you. The castle might be full of antiques. I’d mind the store.”
    â€œWhat about us?” said Jessup plaintively.
    Inside the shop, a loud buzzer sounded, indicating that someone had come through the front door. Emily and Jessup shot to their feet, looking hopeful.
    â€œOh Lord,” said Aunt Jen. “Customer. I forgot to close up.”
    Maggie looked at her children, and grinned. “The double act, eh? Okay — but keep it short.”
    They scurried indoors. Emily glanced at her hair in the mirror, and peered down to make sure Jessup’s T-shirt was tucked into his jeans. Then she opened the pass door and the two of them went side by side into the shop. Being crammed with furniture, it looked like a very crowded living room, with a few eccentric patches like the row of four grandfather clocks against one wall, or the cluster