'Stop!' shouted Virginia. She was very angry. 'You are the one who is rude, and noisy, and nasty. If we are talking about dishonesty, I know that you stole the paints out of my paintbox. You did it to colour that stupid blood-stain in the library. First you took all my reds, including the bright red, and I couldn't paint any more sunsets.'

'Then you took the emerald-green and the yellow. In the end I had nothing left but dark blue and white. I could only paint pictures of things in the moonlight.'

'Those pictures always make me sad when I look at them, and they are very hard to paint. I didn't tell anyone what you did, but I was very angry, and it was all so silly anyway. Do you think anyone really has bright green blood?'

The ghost was surprised and he answered politely to stop Virginia getting more angry.

'Well, really, what could I do? It is very difficult to get real blood these days. And your brother caused the problem by cleaning away the stain with his Paragon Detergent, so I don't see why I shouldn't use your paints to put it back.'

'As for the colour of the stain, different people prefer different things - for instance, the Cantervilles are aristocrats so people say we 'have blue blood'. But I know you Americans are not interested in things like that.'