"Ah! my little friend, my godson in the speerit, Godfrey

"I daresay you thought that poor old Madame was dead, gone to join
the Celestials, because you have not heard from her for so long a
while. Not a bit, my little Godfrey, though perhaps I should not
call you little, since my crystal shows me that you have grown
taller even than you were in the old days at Lucerne, and much
broader, quite a good-made man and nice to look at. Well, my
Godfrey, I hear things about you sometimes, for the most part from
the speerit called Eleanor who, I warn you, has a great bone to
pick with you. Because, you see, people do not change so much as
you think when they get to the other side. So a woman remains a
woman, and being a woman she stays jealous, and does not like it
when her affinity turns the back on her, as you have done on
Eleanor. Therefore she will give you a bad trick if she can, just
as a woman would upon the earth. Also I hear of you sometimes from
Miss Ogilvy or, rather, her speerit, for she is as fond of you as
ever, so fond that I think you must have mixed up together in a
previous life, because otherwise there is nothing to account for
it. She tries to protect you from Eleanor the indignant, with whom
she has, I gather, much row.

"Now for my message, which come to me from all these speerits. I
hear you have done very well in what they call examinations, and
have before you a shining future. But do not think that you will
be happy, my Godfrey, for you will not get that girl you want for
a long, long while, and then only for the shortest of time, just
enough to kiss and say, 'Oh! my pretty, how nice you are!' And
then _au revoir_ to the world of speerits. Meanwhile, being a
little fool, you will go empty and hungry, since you are not one
of those who hate the woman, which, after all, is the best thing
in life for the man while he is young, like, so the spirits tell
me, does your dear papa. And oh! how plenty this woman fruit hang
on every tree, so why not pluck and eat before the time come, when
you cannot, because if you still have appetite those nice plums
turn your stomach? So you have a bad time before you, my Godfrey,
waiting for the big fat plum far away which you cannot see or
touch and much less taste, while the other nice plums fall into
different hands, or wither--wither, waiting to be eaten.

"At end, when you get your big, fat p