The circle, which was very select, consisted of three highly susceptible ladies and Stellato as medium-in-chief. Miss Turligood, a sort of Oroveso to the Druidical chorus, was a muscular spinster, fierce and forty, sporting steel spectacles, a frizette of the most scrupulous honesty, and a towering comb which formed what the landscape-gardeners call "an object" in the distance. Next this commanding lady, with fat hands sprawled upon the table, sat Mrs. Colfodder, widow, according to the flesh, of a respectable Foxden grocer. By later spiritual communications, however, it appeared that matters stood very differently; for no sooner had the departed Colfodder looked about him a little in the world to come than he proceeded to contract marriage with Queen Elizabeth of England, thereby leaving his mortal relict quite free to receive the addresses of the late Lord Byron, whose proposals were of the most honorable as well as amatory character. Miss Branly, by far the most pleasing of the lady-patronesses, was a fragile, stove-dried mantua-maker,--and, truly, it seemed something like poetic justice to recompense her depressed existence with the satisfactions of a material heaven full of marryings and givings in marriage.
"Will Sir Joseph tip for us again?" inquired Miss Turligood, with her eyes fixed upon a crack in the mahogany table. "Will he? Will he not? Will he?"
"Hark! wasn't that a rap?" cried Stellato, in a husky whisper.
Here every one pricked an ear towards the table.
"The Doctor promised to be present to give a scientific and philosophical view of these communications," parenthesized the interrogator.
"Byron's sign, as I'm a living woman!" ejaculated the Widow Colfodder.
"Her spiritual partner and guardian-angel," explained Miss Turligood,--and this for my satisfaction as the last-comer.
"Have you brought your patent lyre here to-night?"
"He played the lyre so beautiful on earth, that when he got to the spheres a committee gave him a golden one, with all the modern improvements."
Question concerning the lyre repeated. A mysterious rubbing interpreted as an affirmative reply.
"Have you brought Pocahontas with you? (she 'most always comes with him)--and if so, can she kiss me to-night?"