“And so you’re going to have a sitting with the ouija-board,” said Mr. Merriall. “I am intensely interested in ouija. Very odd phenomena certainly occur. Strange but true.”
A fresh idea had come into Georgie’s head. Lucia certainly had not appeared outside the window that looked into the garden, and so he walked across to the other one which commanded a view of the Green. There she was heading straight for the Museum.
“It is marvellous,” he said to Mr. Merriall. “We have had some curious results here, too.”
Mr. Merriall was moving daintily about the room, and Georgie wondered if it would be possible to convert Oxford trousers into an ordinary pair. It was dreadful to think that Olga, even in fun, had suggested that such a man was his double. There was the little cape as well.
“I have quite fallen in love with your Riseholme,” said Mr. Merriall.
“We all adore it,” said Georgie, not attending very much because his whole mind was fixed on the progress of Lucia across the Green. Would she catch them in the Museum, or had they already gone? Smaller and smaller grew her figure and her twinkling legs, and at last she crossed the road and vanished behind the belt of shrubs in front of the tithe-barn.
“All so homey and intimate. ‘Home, Sweet Home,’ in fact,” said Mr. Merriall. “We have been hearing how Mrs. Shuttleworth loves singing in this room.”
Georgie was instantly on his guard again. It was quite right and proper that Lucia should be punished, and of course Riseholme would know all about it, for indeed Riseholme was administering the punishment. But it was a very different thing to let her down before those who were not Riseholme.
“Oh yes, she sings here constantly,” he said. “We are all in and out of each other’s houses. But I must be getting back to mine now.”
Mr. Merriall longed to be asked to this little ouija party at Olga’s, and at present his hostess had been quite unsuccessful in capturing either of the two great stars. There was no harm in trying....