Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/299

Rh 'Well,' my young friend explained, 'that's just what he meant—they live for her memory. She is with them in the sense that they think of nothing else.'

I found matter for surprise in this correction, but also, at first, matter for relief. At the same time it left, as I turned it over, a fresh ambiguity. 'If they think of nothing else, how can they think so much of Marmaduke?'

The difficulty struck her, though she gave me even then a dim impression of being already, as it were, rather on Marmaduke's side, or, at any rate—almost as against herself—in sympathy with the Dedricks. But her answer was prompt: 'Why, that's just their reason—that they can talk to him so much about her.'

'I see.' Yet still I wondered. 'But what's his interest?'

'In being drawn into it?' Again Lavinia met her difficulty. 'Well, that she was so interesting! It appears she was lovely.'

I doubtless fairly gaped. 'A little girl in a pinafore?'

'She was out of pinafores; she was, I believe, when she died, about fourteen. Unless it was sixteen! She was at all events wonderful for beauty.'

'That's the rule. But what good does it do him if he has never seen her?'

She thought a moment, but this time she had no answer. 'Well, you must ask him!'

I determined without delay to do so; but I had before me meanwhile other contradictions. 'Hadn't I better ask him on the same occasion what he means by their "communicating"?'

Oh, this was simple. 'They go in for "mediums," don't you know, and raps, and sittings. They began a year or two ago.'

'Ah, the idiots!' I remember, at this, narrow-mindedly exclaiming. 'Do they want to drag him in?'

'Not in the least; they don't desire it, and he has nothing to do with it.'