upon another. The odour from the wicker bottle (which has somehow passed into Durdles’s keeping), soon intimates that the cork has been taken out; but this is not ascertainable through the sense of sight, since neither can descry the other. And yet, in talking, they turn to one another, as though their faces could commune together.
“This is good stuff, Mister Jarsper!”
“It is very good stuff, I hope.—I bought it on purpose.”
“They don’t show, you see, the old uns don’t, Mister Jarsper!”
“It would be a more confused world than it is, if they could.”
“Well, it would lead towards a mixing of things,” Durdles acquiesces: pausing on the remark, as if the idea of ghosts had not previously presented itself to him in a merely inconvenient light, domestically, or chronologically. “But do you think there may be Ghosts of other things, though not of men and women?”
“What things? Flowerbeds and watering-pots? Horses and harness?”
“No. Sounds.”
“What sounds?”
“Cries.”
“What cries do you mean? Chairs to mend?”
“No. I mean screeches. Now I’ll tell you, Mr. Jarsper. Wait a bit till I put the bottle right.” Here the cork is evidently taken out again, and replaced again. “There! Now it’s right! This time last year, only a few days later, I happened to have been doing what was correct by the season, in the way of giving it the welcome it had a right to expect, when them