"But, Madam, Madam, you forget that the spirits have positively commanded us to hold sittings in your parlor three times a day till further notice!" gasped Miss Turligood, in extreme astonishment.
"I do not recognize the authority of the spirits. They have no right to dictate the uses of my parlor."
Here was a confession indeed on the part of Miss Prowley. _Not recognize the authority of the spirits!_ Miss Turligood fairly staggered, when she heard the impious announcement. The smooth sciolist Stellato rallied his weak wits and uttered a cry of wonder at such flagitious heresy. The future Lady Byron, taking as a deliberate insult any doubts of the identity and authority of her posthumous spouse, threw up her arms in horror, and trotted out of the house.
Finally, we got rid of them all,--_how_, I don't exactly remember, and if I did, it would not concern the reader to know. We delivered Miss Turligood over to her Irishman, (who had brought a carryall with him this time,) and charged him never to drive her back; Betty and the cook were restored to the kitchen; Stellato and Miss Branly disappeared, no one could say where.
"And now," exclaimed Colonel Prowley, with a sigh of relief, "let us forget this nonsense, and go to dinner,--for the spirits have given me an appetite, if nothing else."
"Then you intend to follow what I understand to be the teaching of your invisible visitors," remarked Dr. Burge, pleasantly.
"Ha! ha!" laughed the Colonel; "I doubt if the ghosts were quite unreasonable about that."
"Nay, brother, you should tell our good minister that we have but a cold collation, and that prepared on the previous day, as is our custom on the Sabbath," urged Miss Prowley, with the dignity of an exact and consistent housekeeper.
"It is as well we have," was the reply; "for those precious Indians, although wise in medicine, knew little enough about cookery. They would have made sorry work, had it been necessary to give a culinary direction to the inspirations of our damsels below-stairs."
"And yet, after all," resumed our host, meditatively, and after a moment's pause, "it seems scarcely right to make a jest of this matter; for, although the manifestations of to-day have been ridiculous enough,--yet--really--when I think of some of those instructive observations of poor Sir Joseph Barley"----