"I have noticed that I don't like him. He looks like a professional spiritualist."
"I guess he is in one sense—in slate writing—guess he has most everything put down on the slate."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Has everything charged that he can. He's a fraud, no doubt."
"Agnes says so."
"Oh, well, what Agnes says couldn't be taken as evidence. She sees a man and has a sort of flutter. If the flutter's pleasant the man's all right; if it isn't, he's all wrong."
"But there might be intuition in a flutter," she said.
"Yes, or prejudice. But George has always been a good judge of men. He has excellent business sense—has invested in lots and can make a fair profit on them at any time he cares to sell. Shall we turn back here?"
Agnes and the preacher sat in the drawing room, she flouncing about on a sofa, and he dignified on a straight-back chair. It is rather remarkable that a preacher is more often attracted by a mischief-loving girl than by a sedate maiden; and this may account for the truth that ministers' sons are sometimes so full of that quality known, impiously, as the devil. In the early days of the English church, when the meek parson, not permitted to hope that he might one day chase a fox or drink deep with the bishop, and who was forced to retire to the servants' hall when the ale and the cheese cakes came on, had cause in secret to offer up thanks that not more than two of his sons were pirates on the high seas. And Bradley sat there watching a cotillion of mischief dancing in the eyes of the girl.
"You have never been connected with any church, have you?"