"We will have better results if we 'cut out' dessert," Mrs. Joyce
explained to Bartol. "Over-eating has spoiled many a seance."
"Is it as physical as that?" exclaimed Stinchfield.
"I never eat when I am on a hard case," said Bartol.
Victor began to awaken to the crucial nature of the test which was about
to be made of his mother's powers. This laughing young physicist was
precisely the sort of man to put the screws severely on. It was all a
problem in mechanics for him. Whether the psychic suffered or rejoiced
in the operation did not concern him. "If she is deceiving us in any way
he will discover it," the son forecasted, with a feeling of fear at his
heart. "And yet how can I defend her?"
Bartol said to Mrs. Ollnee: "Would you mind dressing for the
performance? I'd like you to go with Mrs. Joyce and Marie, and clothe
yourself in all black if possible, so that I can say you came into my
study not merely searched, but re-clothed."
She said, quite simply: "I have no objection at all. I am in your
hands."
After the older women left the room Victor drew near to Leo with a low
word. "Poor little mother! she is in the hands of the inquisition
to-night."
Thrilling to the excitement of the hour, she forgot her resentful
superior pose. "Isn't that little man magnificent? Why didn't you go in
for civil engineering or chemistry?"
"Because no one had sense enough to advise me," he bitterly answered.
"Think where that funny little body has carried that head," she
continued, still studying Stinchfield. "If he had only been given
shoulders like yours--"
"I'm glad you like something about me."
"I was speaking of your body as a machine for carrying a brain around
over the earth."
"You seem to think of me as having no brain."
"Oh, not quite so bad as that. You have a brain, but it's undeveloped."
"I'm growing up rapidly these days. Seems like I'd lived a year since
our walk last night."