For example, hastening to an appointment one morning (March 29th), I carelessly left my muff in a taxicab. Discovering the loss an hour later, I telephoned to the cab company, to be told that no report had been received from the cabman, but that they would try to locate him at one of their various stands. It was arranged that I should call at their office for it late in the afternoon, had it been found.
During luncheon, which I took at a restaurant, Mary K. indicated that she had something to say, and on the back of an envelop wrote: “Your muff is found for you.” Two hours later, when I reached home, the muff had been returned by the cabman.
Another incident, less accurate in detail, but substantially correct, concerned Mr. Kendal and my record-book. Having had, during his brief stay in New York, no leisure in which to read the record—which then contained only the genesis of this experience, Frederick’s first interviews with his mother, and some messages from Mary Kendal not included in my letters to her husband—he had taken the book away with him (March 20th), and three or four days later I began looking for its return. When, on the 29th or 30th (exact date not noted), it had not arrived, I asked Mary K. whether she knew anything about it, and she replied that it had been sent and would probably reach me that day. At that time the record, wrapped and addressed, lay on his desk, where he had left it with instructions that it be mailed when he left home for the Easter week-end. It had been overlooked, and he found it there when he returned on the following Monday. Apparently Mary K. perceived only his intention and belief that it was on its way to me.
On the 1st of April she told me that a letter concerning these communications, then several days overdue, for which I waited with great anxiety, had at last been written.
“Really written?” I asked. “Or is this one of those successfully started things you regard as accomplished?”
“Really written.”
At the same time she promised me other letters, from persons specifically named, and gave me certain information concerning a member of the Gaylord family.
Two days later, when none of these letters had appeared, I said, “Where are those letters you promised me?”
“The letters are coming, fearful and wonderful messenger,” she humorously assured me. “You have not made a m ... fr ... friend ... free ... fantom (O) friend in vain.”
Laughing, I asked: “Is ‘fantom friend’ right?”