Margaret stood looking out of the window at the mountain opposite, and I said nothing for fear she would stop talking. After a few moments she went on:
"Wan day I saw an elephant over on the mountain side an' him filling his trunk, with water for a long journey—Oh, it's manny the thing I see, but I don't mind if I never see them, only they come to me."
Filling one's trunk with water for a long journey would not appeal to a drummer, but this flippant thought I did not extend to Margaret. Perhaps she would not have understood, as drummers are bagmen on the other side. That is they are bagmen in books. In hotels they are commercial men.
Margaret was not yet through telling me the things she had seen. I was told that there were some people that she would not talk to on occult subjects, fearing their badinage, but her sincerity was so evident that I could not have joked with her on the subject if I had thought of doing so.
"Wance I saw the present King Edward, an' him about to be crowned, an' he was in the heavens lying on a bed, and his wife standing near, dressed in a dress with short sleeves an' point lace on them, an' I said to me master,"—Margaret was living in service,—"'Sure he'll not be crowned this time.'
"An' that very evening the news came that the King was ill, and he was not crowned that time at all. An' the pitchers in the papers afterward showed the Queen in point lace as I had seen her."
Afterward I talked to the gentleman for whom this ancient woman kept house, and he said there was no end to the queer things she had seen. He told me that once she saw in "the heavens" a funeral cortége issuing from a smallish house, with big black horses, plumed and draped, and drawing a hearse, and in it either the pope or the queen.
"Some one high up," Margaret said.
That evening came the news of the death of Queen Victoria.
Of course this is "merely" second sight, but if you don't believe in such things you don't feel like scoffing when people see visions that come true.