“Posey Sharpe.”
“Oh, indeed,” and he glanced at the stairway before him, where a small black sign with gilt lettering on the step just above her head read,
“Madam Atheldena Sharpe,
“CLAIRVOYANT.”
“So that was your mother, was it, who raised all that row here last night?”
“No, she wasn’t my mother, but I lived with her.”
“If she wasn’t, how comes it your name is the same?”
“It isn’t, really, only I’ve lived with her so long that people called me that. She said I was her niece, but I wasn’t any relation at all.”
He looked at the sign again, “Madam Sharpe. Well,” with a chuckle at his own witticism, “she wasn’t sharp enough to keep from being exposed. And you were the spirit child, I suppose?”
Posey nodded, a very dejected-looking spirit she seemed at that moment.
“Well, when she took herself off so suddenly why didn’t you go with her?”