They could not tell what they wanted, they did not know themselves,
and the man would use bad language, and slam the door in their
faces.
Then they would think that perhaps the Spirit meant the fifth
street the other way, or the third house from the opposite corner,
and would try again, with still more unpleasant results.
One July I met Whibley, mooning disconsolately along Princes
Street, Edinburgh.
"Hullo!" I exclaimed, "what are you doing here? I thought you were
busy over that School Board case."
"Yes," he answered, "I ought really to be in London, but the truth
is I'm rather expecting something to happen down here."
"Oh!" I said, "and what's that?"
"Well," he replied hesitatingly, as though he would rather not talk
about it, "I don't exactly know yet."
"You've come from London to Edinburgh, and don't know what you've
come for!" I cried.
"Well, you see," he said, still more reluctantly, as it seemed to
me, "it was Maria's idea; she wished--"
"Maria!" I interrupted, looking perhaps a little sternly at him,
"who's Maria?" (His wife's name I knew was Emily Georgina Anne.)
"Oh! I forgot," he explained; "she never would tell her name
before you, would she? It's the Spirit, you know.
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