The present paper deals with the spectral and the oscillation properties of a linear pencil $A-lambda B$. Here $A$ and $B$ are linear operators generated by the differential expressions $(py)$ and $-y+ cry$, respectively. In particular, it is shown that the negative eigenvalues of this problem are simple and the corresponding eigenfunctions $y_{-n}$ have $n-1$ zeros in $(0,1)$.