"I got that you were a physician," said Rosalie, "but there's one place I got you plumb wrong. I thought it was business troubles. So the trouble's your heart and affections! It's that big-eyed blonde niece of Markham's, of course. Well, you ain't the first. The best way to bring the young men like a flock of blackbirds is to shut a girl away from 'em."
Now the young man showed real surprise.
"How did you know?" he enquired.
"My controls an' guides, of course," responded Rosalie. "They couldn't find anybody else to fall in love with around the Markham house—ain't as smart as you thought you was, are you?"
"Beside you," he responded, "I'm Beppo the Missing Link."
Rosalie acknowledged the compliment, and turned to business.
"I ain't asking you how I'm going about it," she said; "probably you've planted that. I am asking you if you're willing to risk fifty a week on a pig in a poke? I know about her; we all do. She's just like Mrs. Fife. The Psychic Researchers have written up Mrs. Fife, but they ain't got half of her. They miss the big things, just like they get fooled on the little things. We know. And we know about Mrs. Markham, too, though she's had sense enough to keep shut up from the professors.
"You're a skeptic," pursued Rosalie, "and I'm blowin' my breath to cool a house afire when I talk to you. I guess I just talk to hear myself talk. We start real. I did; we all do. With some of us it's a big streak an' with some it's a little. I was pretty big—pretty big. Things happen; voices and faces. Things that are true right out of the air, and things that ain't true—all mixed up with what you're thinking yourself. It comes just when it wants to, not when you want it. And the longer you go on, and the more horse sense you get, the less it comes."
Rosalie stopped a moment, and veiled her eyes with her lashes, as though speaking out of trance.
"Everyone of us says to herself, 'It won't leave me!' An' we start to practice. What are we goin' to do then? You git a sitter. She pays her two dollars. And they don't come perhaps. Not for that sitter, or the next sitter, or the next. But you have to give the value for the two dollars or go out of business. So some day, you guess. That's the funny thing about this business, anyway. Lots of times you ain't quite sure whether guessing did it, or spirits. I've glimpsed the ring on a girl's left hand, and right then my voices have said, 'Engaged!' Now was it me makin' that voice, or the spirit? I don't know. But when you begin to guess, you find how easy people are—how they swallow fakes and cry for more. As sitters go, fakin' gets 'em a lot harder than the real stuff. An' before long—it's easy—you're slipping the slates or bringing spooks from cabinets—let me tell you no medium ever did that genuine. But it's funny how long the real thing stays. Now you—I called your father Wilfred. Maybe I'll wake up to-morrow night, seein' your face, and a voice will come right out of the air and say a name—and it'll be yours. It's happened; it will happen again; but generally when I can't make any use of it.