"Well, now, lock the door," exclaimed Kate, excitedly, "and tell me all about yourself. Start at the very beginning. Dr. Britt has told me something, but I want to know everything. When did you first know you had this power? That's the first question."
Mrs. Lambert began in the tone of one retelling an old story. "Up till the day my little son Walter died, Viola was just like any other girl of her age—healthy and pretty—a very pretty child."
"I can believe it." Kate's eyes dwelt admiringly on the girl.
"My husband and I were good Presbyterians, and I had never given much thought to spirits or spiritualism, but after our little boy died Robert began to study up, and every time we went to the city he'd go to see a psychic, and that troubled me. As a good church-member I thought he ought not to do it, and so one day I said, 'Robert, I think you ought to tell Mr. McLane'—that was our minister—'what you are doing. It isn't right to visit mediums and go to church, too—one or the other ought to be given up.' He said—I remember his exact words: 'I can't live without these messages of comfort from my boy. They say he is going to manifest himself soon—here in our own home.' I remember that was his exact expression, for I wondered what it was to manifest. That very night things began."
Kate's eyes snapped. "What things?"
"Well, Waltie had a little chair that he liked—a little reed rocking-chair—and my husband always kept this chair close by where he sat reading. That night I saw the chair begin to rock all by itself—and yet, some way, it didn't scare me. 'Robert, did you move Waltie's chair?' I asked. 'No,' he said. 'Why?' 'Because it rocked.' Robert threw down his book and looked at the chair. 'Viola must have moved it,' he said. 'Viola was in her own little chair on the other side of the table,' I said. 'It must have been the cat, then.'
"And then, just while we both looked at it, it began to move again exactly as if Waltie were in it. It creaked, too, as it used to when he rocked."
"I should have been frightened stiff," exclaimed Kate, whose eyes were beginning to widen.
"Nothing that has happened since has given me such a turn. Robert jumped up and felt all about the chair, sure that Viola had tied a string to it—and still she was no child for tricks. Then Robert bent right down over the chair, and it stopped for a moment, and then slid backward under the table, just as our own boy used to do. He loved to play tent. Robert looked up at me as white as the dead. 'It is Waltie, mother; he has come back to us,' he said, and I believed it, too."
In spite of herself, Kate shivered with a keen, complete comprehension of the thrilling joy and terror of that moment, but Viola sat listlessly waiting the end of her mother's explanation. Plainly, it was all a wearisome story to her.