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 with a fine contempt for precautions, favours a motor trip across the continent, gallantly assures his family that the project is "perfectly feasible," tells his sister to "shoot some genuine food" at her sick husband, who appears to have been kept on a low diet, and observes with pleasure that his mother is overcoming her aversion to tobacco. "Mamma is learning," he comments patronizingly. "Some day she will arrive at the point where a smoker will fail to arouse a spark of criticism, or even of interest. When that day comes, she will have learned what she is living for this time."

Here was a chance for a ghostly son to get even with the parent who had disparaged the harmless pleasures of his youth. Harry is not the kind of a spirit to miss such an opportunity. He finds a great deal to correct in his family, a great deal to blame in the world, and some things to criticize in the universe. 43