um
or the sitters."

"But surely our bodies aren't like that?"

"No; I can't say that I think they are. But that's what she said."

"My dear, please explain. I want to understand the woman."

Maggie frowned a little.

"Well, the first thing she said was that those souls want to
communicate; and that they begin generally by things like
table-rapping, or making blue lights. Then when you know they're
there, they can go further. Sometimes they gain control of the medium
who is in a trance, and speak through him, or write with his hand.
Then, if things are favorable, they begin to draw out this matter, and
make it into a kind of body for themselves, very thin and ethereal, so
that you can pass your hand through it. Then, as things get better and
better, they go further still, and can make this body so solid that
you can touch it; only this is sometimes rather dangerous, as it is
still, in a sort of way, connected with the medium. I think that's the
idea."

"But what's the good of it all?"

"Well, you see, Mrs. Stapleton thinks that they really are souls from
the other world, and that they can tell us all kinds of things about
it all, and what's true, and so on."

"But you don't believe that?"

Maggie turned her large eyes on the old lady; and a spark of humor
rose and glimmered in them.

"Of course I don't," she said.

"Then how do you explain it?"

"I think it's probably all a fraud. But I really don't know. It
doesn't seem to me to matter much--"

"But if it should be true?"

Maggie raised her eyebrows, smiling.

"Dear auntie, do put it out of your head. How can it possibly be
true?"

Mrs. Baxter set her lips in as much severity as she could.

"I shall ask the Vicar," she said. "We might stop at the Vicarage on
the way back."

Mrs. Baxter did not often stop at the Vicarage; as she did not
altogether approve of the Vicar's wife. There was a good deal of pride
in the old lady, and it seemed to her occasionally as if Mrs. Rymer
did not understand the difference between the Hall and the Parsonage.
She envied sometimes, secretly, the Romanist idea of celibacy: it was
so much easier to get on with your spiritual adviser if you did not
have to consider his wife. But here, was a matter which a clergyman
must settle for her once and for all; so she put on a slight air of
dignity which became her very well, and a little after four o'clock
the Victoria turned up the steep little drive that led to the
Vicar