'Queen Victoria came to the throne.'
'Strange,' he said more to himself than to any one else. She did not contradict him.
'You or me?' asked Monkey, who overheard.
'All of us,' he answered. 'We all think the same things. It's a dream,
I believe; the whole thing is a dream.'
'It's a fact though,' said Miss Waghorn with decision, 'and now I must go and write my letters, and then finish a bit of lace I'm doing. You will excuse me?' She rose, made a little bow, and left the table.
Mother watched her go. 'What has come over the old lady?' she thought. 'She seems to be getting back her mind and memory too. How very odd!'
In the afternoon Henry Rogers had been into Neuchatel. It seemed he had some business there of a rather private nature. He was very mysterious about it, evading several offers to accompany him, and after supper he retired early to his own room in the carpenter's house. And, since he now was the principal attraction, a sort of magnet that drew the train of younger folk into his neighbourhood, the Pension emptied, and the English family, deprived of their leader, went over to the Den.
'Partir a l'anglaise,' laughed the Widow Jequier, as she saw them file away downstairs; and then she sighed. Some day, when the children were older and needed a different education, they would all go finally. Down these very stairs they would go into the street. She loved them for themselves, but, also, the English family was a permanent source of income to her, and the chief. They stayed on in the winter, when boarders were few and yet living expenses doubled. She sighed, and fluttered into her tiny room to take her finery off, finery that had once been worn in Scotland and had reached her by way of Cook and la petite vitesse in the Magic Box.
And presently she fluttered out again and summoned her sister. The Postmaster had gone to bed; the kitchen girl was washing up the last dishes; Miss Waghorn would hardly come down again. The salon was deserted.
'Come, Anita,' she cried, yet with a hush of excitement in her voice, 'we will have an evening of it. Bring the soucoupe with you, while I prepare the little table.' In her greasy kitchen apron Anita came. Zizi, her boy, came with her. Madame Jequier, with her flowing garment that was tea-gown, garden-dress, and dressing-gown all in one, looked really like a witch, her dark hair all askew and her eyes shining with mysterious anticipation. 'We'll ask the spirits for help and guidance,' she said to herself, lest the boy should overhear. For Zizi often helped them with their amateur planchette, only they told him it was electricity: le magnetisme, le fluide, was the term they generally made use of. Its vagueness covered all possible explanations with just the needed touch of confusion and suggestion in it.