"It was your grandfather's reading-table, and he likes me to keep it. Besides, it is highly magnetized and very sensitive."
"Oh rats!" he irreverently burst forth. "You can't magnetize a piece of wood. Wood is a non-conductor. You can't subvert a physical law just by saying so."
"I don't mean it in that crude sense," she replied, quite mistress of herself. She had taken up and was holding between her hands a small hinged slate.
"What's that for?" asked Victor.
"To vitalize the surface. I am able to give it vitality by my touch." She laid the slate upon the table and placed her spread hand upon it. "Put your hand upon mine, Victor."
He did as she bade him, rebelling at the childish folly of it all. "What do you expect to do?" he asked.
Almost immediately the slate seemed seized by a powerful hand. It began to slide back and forth across the table violently, twisting and clattering. The youth put forth his own great strength and stopped it, but a crunching sound announced that the slate was broken.
His mother said, sharply, "You mustn't do that, Victor." She took up the slate and showed one corner crushed and crumbled. "You can't hold it—you mustn't try—it angers them."
He marveled at the strength which had resisted him, but argued that his mother from long practice had become very muscular. Hysterical people often displayed astounding power.
After preparing a new slate she put it on the table as before, saying to the air, "Please don't be rough, father—Victor can't prevent his skepticism."