“Confound Gertrude’s peculiarities!  I want to go to sleep.  Well, let’s have it.”

“Why, you see, she took up with some Spiritualistic notions after her mother’s death; thought she held communications with her, and all that, Aunt Solomon says.”

“Stuff and nonsense!”

“Of course.  But, Fred, dear, I’m inclined to think she must have made her sewing-table walk into the front entry; and Aunt Solomon says the spirits rapped out the whole of Cousin Dorothy’s history on the mantel-piece, behind those blue china vases,—­you must have noticed them at the funeral,—­and not a human hand within six feet.”

“Alison Hotchkiss!” I said, waking thoroughly, and sitting up in bed to emphasize the opinion, “when I hear a spirit rap on my mantel-piece, and see my tables walk about the front entry, I’ll believe that,—­not before!”

“O, I know it!  I’m not a Spiritualist, I’m sure, and nothing would tempt me to be.  But still that sort of reasoning has a flaw in it, hasn’t it, dear?  The King of Siam, you know—­”

I had heard of the King of Siam before, and I politely informed my wife that I did not care to hear of him again.  Spiritualism was a system of refined jugglery.  Just another phase of the same thing which brings the doves out of Mr. Hermann’s empty hat.  It might be entertaining if it had not become such an abominable imposition.  There would always be nervous women and hypochondriac men enough for its dupes.  I thanked Heaven that I was neither, and went to sleep.

Our new house was light and dry; the flues worked well, and the spare chamber heated admirably.  The baby exchanged the champagne-basket for his dainty pink-curtained crib; Tip began to recover from the perpetual cold with which three weeks’ sitting in draughts, and tumbling into water-pails, and playing in the sink, had sweetened his temper; Allis forsook her bandboxes for the crimson easy-chair (very becoming, that chair), or tripped about on her own rested feet; we returned to table-cloths, civilized life, and a fork apiece.

In short, nothing at all worth mentioning happened, till that one night,—­I think it was our first Sunday,—­when Allis waked me at twelve o’clock with the announcement that some one was knocking at the door.  Supposing it to be Bridget with the baby,—­croup, probably, or a fit,—­I unlocked and unlatched it promptly.  No one was there, however; and telling my wife, in no very gentle tone, if I remember correctly, that it would be a convenience, on such cold nights, if she could keep her dreams to herself, I shut the door distinctly and returned to my own.

In the morning I observed a little white circle about each of Allis’s blue eyes, and after some urging she confessed to me that her sleep had been much broken by a singular disturbance in the room.  I might laugh at her if I chose, and she had not meant to tell me, but somebody had rapped in that room all night long.