"Really," he replied with dignity, "I don't see any occasion in what I said for this extraordinary behavior."
"Of course you don't, and that's just what makes the fun of it. So you found something familiar in Mr. Hoskins's statue from the first, did you?" she asked. "And you didn't notice anything particular in it?"
"Particular, particular?" he demanded, beginning to lose his patience at this.
"Oh," she exclaimed, "couldn't you see that it was Lily, all over again?"
Elmore laughed in turn. "Why, so it is; so it is! That accounts for everything that puzzled me. I don't wonder my maunderings amused you. It was ridiculous, to be sure! When in the world did she give him the sittings, and how did you manage to keep it from me so well?"
"Owen!" cried his wife, with terrible severity. "You don't think that Lily would let him put her into it?"
"Why, I supposed—I didn't know—I don't see how he could have done it unless—"
"He did it without leave or license," said Mrs. Elmore. "We saw it all along, but he never 'let on,' as he would say, about it, and we never meant to say anything, of course."
"Then," replied Elmore, delighted with the fact, "it has been a purely unconscious piece of cerebration."
"Cerebration!" exclaimed Mrs. Elmore, with more scorn than she knew how to express. "I should think as much!"