"There are people who think," said Doodles, "that the spirits don't come from anywhere, but are always floating about."
"And then one person catches them, and another doesn't?" asked Archie.
"They tell me that it depends upon what the mediums or medias eat and drink," said Doodles, "and upon what sort of minds they have. They must be cleverish people, I fancy, or the spirits wouldn't come to them."
"But you never hear of any swell being a medium. Why don't the spirits go to a prime minister or some of those fellows? Only think what a help they'd be."
"If they come from the devil," suggested Doodles, "he wouldn't let them do any real good."
"I've heard a deal about them," said Archie, "and it seems to me that the mediums are always poor people, and that they come from nobody knows where. The Spy is a clever woman I daresay—"
"There isn't much doubt about that," said the admiring Doodles.
"But you can't say she's respectable, you know. If I was a spirit I wouldn't go to a woman who wore such dirty stockings as she had on."
"That's nonsense, Clavvy. What does a spirit care about a woman's stockings?"
"But why don't they ever go to the wise people? that's what I want to know." And as he asked the question boldly he struck his ball sharply, and, lo, the three balls rolled vanquished into three different pockets. "I don't believe about it," said Archie, as he readjusted the score. "The devil can't do such things as that or there'd be an end of everything; and as to spirits in the air, why should there be more spirits now than there were four-and-twenty years ago?"