One July I met Whibley, mooning disconsolately along Princes Street, Edinburgh.
“Hullo!” I exclaimed, “what are you doing here? I thought you were busy over that School Board case.”
“Yes,” he answered, “I ought really to be in London, but the truth is I’m rather expecting something to happen down here.”
“Oh!” I said, “and what’s that?”
“Well,” he replied hesitatingly, as though he would rather not talk about it, “I don’t exactly know yet.”
“You’ve come from London to Edinburgh, and don’t know what you’ve come for!” I cried.
“Well, you see,” he said, still more reluctantly, as it seemed to me, “it was Maria’s idea; she wished—”
“Maria!” I interrupted, looking perhaps a little sternly at him, “who’s Maria?” (His wife’s name I knew was Emily Georgina Anne.)
“Oh! I forgot,” he explained; “she never would tell her name before you, would she? It’s the Spirit, you know.”
“Oh! that,” I said, “it’s she that has sent you here. Didn’t she tell you what for?”