Anyway, the invitation was given and accepted, and he kindly promised to ask one or two people to meet me in his house.
All this came to pass some weeks later, on my return from the New Zealand lakes, and just before an expedition to the "Sounds," generally known as the "Sounds Trip."
This is a pleasure trip, organised for early January, which is, of course, midsummer there. It lasts for ten days, and gives one the opportunity of seeing to the best advantage these glorious inlets of the sea.
My week at the sheep station was to precede this, as I have explained; in fact, as the steamer sailed late in the afternoon, it was possible to go on board without stopping for the night at Dunedin, whence we were to sail. But at the last moment a slight contretemps took place. Owing to some delay the steamer would not be able to leave till Monday, instead of the Saturday morning as arranged, and our kind host insisted on extending his hospitality for the two extra days.
Now each day there had been some talk about having an impromptu _séance_, and each day I had successfully evaded the arrangement. I have a great dislike to sitting in casual circles with strangers, and it seemed to me that no good purpose would be served by doing so. It is impossible on these occasions to convince anyone else that you are not pushing or "muscle moving," or generally playing tricks, and it has always seemed to me that the time wasted over mutual recriminations on these points, or the silly jokes that appear inevitable, when two or three human beings at a table get together in a private house; might be much more profitably spent.
Table turning as a parlour game is about as stupid and aimless an amusement as I know. I represented all this to Mr Kitchener, but in vain. He had attended some psychic meetings in Dunback or Dunedin, and evidently wished me to reconsider the matter. Also it happened to be the last day of the year, when people are always more inclined to be obliging, I suppose; anyway that Saturday night, 31st December 1887, found me sitting down to a table in the little drawing-room of that far-away sheep station.
As some reward for any virtue there may have been in yielding my point, I remembered suddenly that George Eliot's message on 28th October--two months previously--had been rather vague, and that it might be interesting, if the chance came, to find out whether "_before another year has rolled away_" meant a year from 28th October, or the year of which so few hours still remained to us.