CAPTAIN. What's all this—and you have never told me about it?
BERTHA. Forgive me, but I dared not, for Grandmother says the spirits take revenge if one talks about them. And then the pen writes, but I don't know whether I'm doing it or not. Sometimes it goes well, but sometimes it won't go at all, and when I am tired nothing comes, but she wants it to come just the same. And tonight I thought I was writing beautifully, but then grandmother said it was all from Stagnelius, and that I had deceived her, and then she got terribly angry.
CAPTAIN. Do you believe that there are spirits?
BERTHA. I don't know.
CAPTAIN. But I know that there are none.
BERTHA. But Grandmother says that you don't understand, Father, and that you do much worse things—you who can see to other planets.
CAPTAIN. Does she say that! Does she say that? What else does she say?
BERTHA. She says that you can't work witchery.
CAPTAIN. I never said that I could. You know what meteoric stones are,—stones that fall from other heavenly bodies. I can examine them and learn whether they contain the same elements as our world. That is all I can tell.
BERTHA. But Grandmother says that there are things that she can see which you cannot see.