"What meaning?" demanded Peter Grimm. "Mine? Try again. Tell her I don't want her to——"
"But," went on McPherson, drawing out pad and fountain pen, "I'll leave this prescription for one of the gardeners to take over to the druggist's. I'll leave it as I go out. I'll be back in—Why, what's up, Kathrien? What has happened? Oh, you've thought it over, eh? That's good. That's the way it should be. I left you all tears and now I find you all smiles. It——"
"Yes," answered Kathrien, half ashamed at her own oddly changed spirits. "I am happier for some reason. Much, much happier than I've been for days and days. I've—I've had such a strange feeling this past few minutes!"
"Have, eh?" asked McPherson curiously. "H'm! So have I. It's in the air, I suppose. I've been as restless as a hungry mouse. Something, for instance, seemed to draw me downstairs here. I can't explain it."
"I can," exulted Peter Grimm. "I'm beginning to be felt!"
"Doctor," hesitated Kathrien, looking nervously about her into the dimmer corners of the lamplit room, "just a little while ago, I—I thought I heard Oom Peter call me.—I was upstairs in my room. And it seemed to me I could hear that dear old call he used to give. It was so vivid, so distinct, so real! It was my imagination, of course. I'm so used to hearing Oom Peter's voice in this room that sometimes I forget for a moment that he isn't here. But—but some one must have called me. I couldn't have imagined it all. Isn't it strange to hear a call like that and then look around and find no one is there?"
"It is a phenomenon well recognised in modern science," affirmed McPherson. "I could cite you a hundred instances of it. Not all from imaginative persons either, Kathrien!" he added solemnly. "I have the firm conviction that in a very short time I shall hear from Peter!"
"I hope so," sighed the Dead Man in whimsical despair.
"He made the compact I told you about," continued McPherson, "and Peter Grimm never broke his word. He will come back. Be sure of that. But what I want is some positive proof,—some absolute test to prove his presence when he comes. Poor old Peter! Bless his kind, obstinate heart! If he keeps that compact with me and comes back, do you know what I shall ask him first?"
"You poor, blind, deaf, old Scotchman!" laughed Peter Grimm. "Open your eyes and your ears! You are like the man who lay down at the edge of the river and died of thirst."