"_Not_ at Johnson's. I don't know if my sister has explained to you,
Doctor Haverhill, that we are a boycotted household? We find it
quite amusing. It leads to a practice of expedience which is
excellent training for the young. Mary has learned to make quite
creditable bread already."
"Out of the sawdust they pack the canned goods in," put in his sister
promptly. "Carry that dish in without spilling it, Dick, and don't
talk nonsense!"
We sat down to one of the most cheerful meals four young people have
ever enjoyed. I would except Mrs. Lessing, but that even her limp
and monosyllabic presence failed to dampen our spirits. Afterwards
Lessing made Turkish coffee over a spirit lamp while the two girls
cleared the table, refusing my assistance high-handedly.
I moved about the room in the familiarity which our informal meal had
fostered, looking at the knick-knacks, the row of books on the
shelves. They were a pretty varied collection, poetry, some modern
French scientific books and novels, and one of the most complete
collections of detective literature I have ever encountered, side by
side with a few text-books on chemistry and some volumes on occultism
and black magic, some familiar to me by title, others unknown. There
was a monthly magazine lying near which I recognized as occupying
itself largely with the subject of psychic phenomena, and turning it
over I noticed Lessing's name in the index.
"You write?" I asked.
"Once in a blue moon!" He looked up from a critical stage in his
coffee-making. "Does that sort of thing interest you?"
"Indifferently--if it happens to be genuine."
"There's so little genuine." He withdrew the coffee deftly, blowing
out the lamp, and stood the little copper pot aside. "That's the
worst of it. One endures hours of boredom for no result."
"You belong to the P.R.S.?"
"A most respectable and unexciting body." He smiled. "I would give
in my demission, only they afford me a patient hearing from time to
time. Besides, it gives me the opportunity of wrangling with
someone, and contention is the spice of life, as I was saying. It
was with that truism that I strove to console Lennox, when I bored
him to extinction."
Involuntarily my ears pricked.
"Was that often?"
"No, I can't say the boredom predominated, in the long run." He
surveyed his coffee with the air of an artist, his boyish head on one
side.
"Where are those cups, Mary?"
"Your system of boredom seemed to have a remarkable effect on Lennox,
anyway," slipped from me involuntarily.
Lessing laughed. "Oh, that was when the boredom ended! He stood it
nobly to a point." He turned toward me. "Would you like to see what
frightened Lennox, sometime?"
Before I could answer Mary Lessing came in with the coffee-cups, and
the subject was dropped.
It was ten o'clock when I rose to leave, my departure hastened by a
suspicion that Mrs. Lessing had glanced several times of purpose at
the clock. They all came out on the porch to say good night, and at
the last moment Lessing added: "I'll walk down the hill with you."
"I've got my bicycle," I said quickly, as Miss Lessing looked up.
"There's no need to bring you out."
"Oh, it'll do me good!"
It was a still, sultry night, with a humidity in the air that had
arisen since nightfall. We walked leisurely, smoking, as far as the
crossroad at the top of Dutchman's Hill. The hollow below was alive
with fireflies, gleaming and vanishing alternately in the soft dusk.
There should be a moon, but within the past hour premonitory
rainclouds had gathered, blotting it out. Lessing glanced at the sky.
"How long will it take you to get back?"
"Ten minutes, more or less. It won't rain till I get there."