CHAPTER VII
The Tobacco Pouch
It was doubtless owing to Benjamin Crane's attitude regarding his son's death that the home did not present more the aspect of a house of mourning. Both Crane and his wife were not only resigned to Peter's fate, but they seemed positively happy in what they believed to be continued communion with his spirit.
As Mrs. Crane said, "When Peter was a child the gypsies said he would go away and be lost, but he would return to us. He has done so, he is doing so—why should we grieve? He tells us he is happy and contented in his new sphere of existence, therefore, we are, too."
"That's all very well," Carlotta Harper would respond, "but I don't look at it that way at all. I want my Peter Boots back again in the flesh. I'm not contented at all with a lot of spirit talk communicated through a paid medium!"
"Don't say paid medium, as if the paying detracted from her worth," Benjamin Crane chid the girl. "Of course, we pay Madame Parlato for her time—why should we not? It's the best money I ever spent! And you're a medium yourself, Carlotta. You hate to acknowledge it, but you are. Your work with the Ouija Board is perfectly marvelous, and I have proved to my own satisfaction that you never use the least fraud."
"Indeed, I don't," said Carlotta, earnestly, "but what's the use? What do I care to have Peter talk on that wooden board—if it is Peter—I want him, himself!"
Carlotta was passing through strange moods. Living alone with her mother, their home seemed far more a house of mourning than the Cranes'.