The more I thought about the Kendal affair the more perplexing it seemed, and since I could neither question that Mary Kendal and Frederick had actually communicated through me nor believe that she would wilfully deceive me, there seemed no possible explanation of the episode Saturday night, except some unconscious influence of my own mind. By the next afternoon I had almost persuaded myself that the repeated erroneous statements about Mr. Kendal had been induced, in some way not traceable, by my increasing anxiety concerning his reception of the letters I had sent to his club.
After luncheon, we took up the communication again, and immediately, without interrogation, the pencil wrote, “You are a good messenger.”
“Who is writing?” I asked.
“Frederick.”
“How much of this do I do, and how much is yours?”
“You do very little. Mostly, you lend a hand.” This is so literally what I do that we laughed. “You are by nature skeptical,” he continued. “Mother dearest, you must not let her make you doubt that I have said all these things.”
“It unsettles me when I know what the message is to be before it is written,” I persisted. “Do you suggest it to me, or I to you?”
“Sometimes you suggest things to me and I say them,” he returned. “Sometimes I don’t.” This reassured me somewhat, for I had frequently noticed that a thought strongly in my mind seemed to delay the pencil, yet was not written.
Returning for a moment to the discussion of politics, Cass asked: “By reason of our different environment, am I not more interested in large details, and you in large movements?”