“Don’t you spend your Sunday afternoons with Everard, Joe?” asked Miss Gittings. “You might bring . . . Huh? . . . Is he a very destructive child?” “No ’m. You mean Malcolm. I t’ought I hadn’t oughta keep him outa Sunday School, like.” “You mustn’t run your words together. . . . Of course; quite right. . . . Say that sentence again, slowly.” Joe obeyed very willingly. This was useful. “Don’t you go to Sunday School, Joe?” asked Mrs. Boardman. “I’ll tell you the troot . . . truth, ’m, I ain’t got the face. I’m so ignorant, they’d put me amongst the littlest kids.” “But if Malcolm is only nine, you must have been at least six or seven when your mother died. Didn’t she give you any religious instruction?” “Yes’m,” said Joe vaguely. “. . . She was a good woman.” “Do you remember her clearly?” “Yes’m, I kin see her now!” Miss Gittings exchanged a look with her sister. “But Fanny, that is psychic!” she said, opening her eyes. Joe had no idea what the funny-sounding word meant. Evidently it was a word which excited them. He waited with stretched ears for some clue to its meaning. “Do you mean that merely in a manner of speaking,” asked Mrs. Boardman of Joe; “or do you mean you can actually see her as if she were a living person?” Joe had no doubt of the answer required to this question. “I kin see her just as plain as I see you ’m.” He closed his eyes, and went on: “She was a tall woman and she gen’ally wore a grey dress, real full in the skirt. She had real black hair, parted in the middle, and brushed down flat, and she wore a little gold cross hangin’ round her neck, and a gold ring on her finger. We wasn’t so poor then.” “An authentic spirit portrait. . . . Huh? . . .” murmured Miss Gittings to her sister. “Tell me,” she asked Joe in some excitement, “under what circumstances does she usually . . . Huh? . . . how? when? where?” “Oh, she comes most any time,” said Joe, “but gen’ally at night. She shows brighter in the dark, seems like.” “What a spirit touch!” murmured the sisters. “She most allus comes when I’m feelin’ bad,” Joe went on. “When I ain’t had no supper; or when I gotta sleep on a park bench. Then I see her beside me, bendin’ over. She puts her hand on my wrist. . . .” “Can you _feel_ her hand?” demanded Miss Gittings breathlessly. “This is important. . . . Huh?” “Surest thing you know ’m! Just like this!” Joe grasped his own wrist. “How truly remarkable!” “And she says: ‘Fight the good fight, Joe!’ Or: ‘Stick it out, son; your mutter is watchin’ you.’ Or somepin like that. Then I feel all right again.” “A genuine psychic!” murmured Miss Gittings breathlessly. “. . . Huh? . . . This rude, uninstructed . . . The veriest sceptic must be . . . Oh, sister! . . . Tell us more,” she said to Joe, “my sister and I are extremely interested in such phenomena. We ourselves . . . go on! go on!”