“Was it a ghost?--I’ve never been sure, myself,” said Hewson.
“How do you explain it?” asked his prospective father-in-law.
“I don’t explain it. I have always left it just as it was. I know that it was a real experience.”
“I think I should have left it so, too,” said Hernshaw. “That always gives it a chance to explain itself. If such a thing had happened to me I should give it all the time it wanted.”
“Well, I haven’t hurried it,” Hewson suggested.
“What I mean,” and Hernshaw stepped to the edge of the porch and threw the butt of his cigar into the darkness, where it described a glimmering arc, “is that if anything came to me that would help shore up my professed faith in what most of us want to believe in, I would take the common-law view of it. I would believe it was innocent till it proved itself guilty. I wouldn’t try to make it out a fraud myself.”
“I’m afraid that’s what I’ve really done,” said Hewson. “But before people I’ve put up a bluff of despising it.”
“Oh, yes, I understand that,” said Hernshaw. “A man thinks that if he can have an experience like that he must be something out of the common, and if he can despise it--”
“You’ve hit my case exactly,” said Hewson, and the two men laughed.