Page:Zangwill-King of schnorrers.djvu/337

323 A DOUBLE-BARRELLED GHOST. 323

" Excuse my deshabille. I did not expect to see you."

" I am aware the season is inopportune," he said apolo- getically. " But I did not care to put off my visit till Christmas. You see, with us Christmas is a kind of Bank Holiday ; and when there is a general excursion, a refined spirit prefers its own fireside. Moreover, I am not, as you may see, very robust, and I scarce like to risk exposing myself to such an extreme change of temperature. Your English Christmas is so cold. With the pyrometer at three hundred and fifty, it is hardly prudent to pass to thirty. On a sultry day like this the contrast is less marked."

" I understand," I said sympathetically.

" But I should hardly have ventured," he went on, " to trespass upon you at this untimely season merely out of deference to my own valetudinarian instincts. The fact is, I am a litterateur."

" Oh, indeed," I said vaguely ; " I was not aware of it."

" Nobody was aware of it," he replied sadly ; " but my calling at this professional hour will, perhaps, go to substan- tiate my statement."

I looked at him blankly. Was he quite sane? All the apparitions I had ever heard of spoke with some approach to coherence, however imbecile their behaviour. The sta- tistics of insanity in the spiritual world have never been published, but I suspect the percentage of madness is high. Mere harmless idiocy is doubtless the prevalent form of dementia, judging by the way the poor unhappy spirits set about compassing their ends ; but some of their actions can only be explained by the more violent species of mania. My great-grandfather seemed to read the suspicion in my eye, for he hastily continued : —

" Of course it is only the outside public who imagine that the spirits of literature really appear at Christmas. It is the