“Please sit down, Mr. Baxter. … I know you haven’t come about that kind of thing. Will you kindly tell me what you have come about?”
He, too, sat down, and, without looking at the other, began slowly to fill his pipe again, with his strong capable fingers. Laurie stared at the process, unseeing.
“Just tell me simply,” said the medium again, still without looking at him.
Laurie threw himself back.
“Well, I will,” he said. “I know it’s absurdly childish; but I’m a little frightened. It’s about a dream.”
“That’s not necessarily childish.”
“It’s a dream I had tonight—in my chair after dinner.”
“Well?”
Then Laurie began.
For about ten minutes he talked without ceasing. Mr. Vincent smoked tranquilly, putting what seemed to Laurie quite unimportant questions now and again, and nodding gently from time to time.
“And I’m frightened,” ended Laurie; “and I want you to tell me what it all means.”
The other drew a long inhalation through his pipe, expelled it, and leaned back.
“Oh, it’s comparatively common,” he said; “common, that is, with people of your temperament, Mr. Baxter—and mine. … You tell me that it was prayer that enabled you to get through at the end? That is interesting.”