erself, but she only
said, "Well, any time you want to show me your way of makin' coffee,"
and went out of the room.

That evening, which was the close of another flawless day, he sat again
watching the light outside, when he saw her come into the hallway with
a large shade-lamp in her hand. She stopped at the door of a room he had
not seen yet, and looked out at him to ask:

"Won't you come in and set in the parlor if you want to?"

He found her there when he came in, and her two sons with her; the
younger was sleepily putting away some school-books, and the elder
seemed to have been helping him with his lessons.

"He's got to begin school next week," she said to Westover; and at the
preparations the other now began to make with a piece of paper and
a planchette which he had on the table before him, she asked, in the
half-mocking, half-deprecating way which seemed characteristic of her:
"You believe any in that?"

"I don't know that I've ever seen it work," said the painter.

"Well, sometimes it won't work," she returned, altogether mockingly now,
and sat holding her shapely hands, which were neither so large nor so
rough as they might have been, across her middle and watching her son
while the machine pushed about under his palm, and he bent his wan eyes
upon one of the oval-framed photographs on the wall, as if rapt in a
supernal vision. The boy stared drowsily at the planchette, jerking this
way and that, and making abrupt starts and stops. At last the young man
lifted his palm from it, and put it aside to study the hieroglyphics it
had left on the paper.

"What's it say?" asked his mother.

The young man whispered: "I can't seem to make out very clear. I guess I
got to take a little time to it," he added, leaning back wearily in his
chair. "Ever seen much of the manifestations?" he gasped at Westover.

"Never any, before," said the painter, with a leniency for the invalid
which he did not feel for his belief.

The young man tried for his voice, and found enough of it to say:
"There's a trance medium over at the Huddle. Her control says 't I can
develop into a writin' medium." He seemed to refer the fact as a sort of
question to Westover, who could think of nothing to say but that it must
be very interesting to feel that one had such a power.

"I guess he don't know he's got it yet," his mother interposed. "And
planchette don't seem to know, either."

"We ha'n't given it a fair trial yet," said the you