"Well, as usual," replied Mrs. Crane. "She was here last night. She——"
"She's a dear girl," Crane interrupted his wife, and a peculiar look crossed his face. "You come round soon again, boys, but I fear we must let you go now. My wife is keeping up bravely, but——" he glanced at the little woman tenderly, and took her hand in his. "And I, too, don't feel like talking more now. So good-night,—and, thank you for all your good comradeship with my boy,—my Peter Boots."
"We want sympathy, too, Mr. Crane," said Blair; "Peter was very dear to us both. We're not given to spilling over, but we have lost a dear friend and chum whose place can never be filled by another."
"Right!" said Shelby, in a choked voice, and his handclasp with Peter's father said the rest.
But once on the street his exasperation broke forth in words. "I can stand any sort of idiots," he said, "except spook idiots! They make me want to go back to the Labrador!"
"Sort of queer, though, that message,—from Peter——"
"From Peter—nothing! Don't desecrate that boy's memory by even an implication that he'd fiddle with a Ouija Board! Ugh!"
"How do you explain it, then?"
"There's nothing to explain."
"You think Crane,—er—misstated?"