“Not often,” I answered. “I believe I may truthfully say this is my first offense.”
“Your great-grandmother—is she very old?”
“That is the sad part of it,” I moaned, bursting into tears. “It is terrible for one to die so young. She is only thirty-five.”
The widow seemed surprised.
“Only thirty-five!” she exclaimed; “and your great-grandmother? You are at least sixteen or seventeen. It is impossible for you to have a great-grandmother who is only thirty-five!”
I perceived the necessity of side-stepping at once.
“Pardon me, madam,” I said. “The lady is my grandmother, but she weighs at least two hundred and ninety pounds, so I call her my great grandmother.”
And I got away with it. She was so relieved to find me strictly truthful that she did not question the possibility of my having a grandmother of that age. Had she done so, I should have explained that doubtless in my haste I got the figures reversed, and that my grandmother was fifty-three instead of thirty-five. Not being particularly strong in mathematics, I sometimes make these little fox paws with figures.
“Your poor father and mother,” murmured the widow; “were they people of a spiritual turn?”
“My father was,” I replied; “decidedly so. I have known him to go out with the parson for spiritual stimulation. They would go into a back room somewhere and sit down at an ordinary round table, and it would not be long before spirits appeared before them. When those spirits departed my father used to rap on the table, and more spirits would come. After a prolonged séance of this kind my father usually saw things.”