“My cousin is out,” said Miss Connell. “Doctor Sperry has taken her for a ride. She will be back very soon.”
I shook a cat from my trouser leg, and my wife made an unimportant remark.
“I may as well tell you, I disapprove of what Alice is doing,” said Miss Connell. “She doesn’t have to. I’ve offered her a good home. She was brought up a Presbyterian. I call this sort of thing playing with the powers of darkness. Only the eternally damned are doomed to walk the earth. The blessed are at rest.”
“But you believe in her powers, don’t you?” my wife asked.
“I believe she can do extraordinary things. She saw my father’s spirit in this very room last night, and described him, although she had never seen him.”
As she had said that only the eternally damned were doomed to walk the earth, I was tempted to comment on this stricture on her departed parent, but a large cat, much scarred with fighting and named Violet, insisted at that moment on crawling into my lap, and my attention was distracted.
“But the whole thing is un-Christian and undignified,” Miss Connell proceeded, in her cold voice. “Come, Violet, don’t annoy the gentleman. I have other visions of the next life than of rapping on tables and chairs, and throwing small articles about.”
It was an extraordinary visit. Even the arrival of Miss Jeremy herself, flushed with the air and looking singularly normal, was hardly a relief. Sperry, who followed, was clearly pleased to see us, however.
It was not hard to see how things were with him. He helped the girl out of her wraps with a manner that was almost proprietary, and drew a chair for her close to the small fire which hardly affected the chill of the room.
With their entrance a spark of hospitality seemed to kindle in the cat lady’s breast. It was evident that she liked Sperry. Perhaps she saw in him a method of weaning her cousin from traffic with the powers of darkness. She said something about tea, and went out.