As each visitor was permitted to ask any question he liked of the Egyptian gentleman, the fortune-telling business went briskly on till closing time, when everybody felt that they had had a very fair sixpennyworth, and went home to dream of the things in store for them.
"Spirit lights" had floated all about the room, accompanied by handbells, daubed with luminous paint, and agitated by unseen hands. The entertainment was altogether a very eerie affair, and no doubt contributed its quota towards manufacturing mental disorders for the neighbouring asylum.
It was very droll to see the old nurse in her new character. She had, in a few months, cast off most of her hospital peculiarities, and had picked up from the medium an ample vocabulary of spiritualist terms.
They worked together in harness very well. Podger was the jackal who provided the material for the medium to work upon; she got to know all the secrets of the folks who came to the _séances_, and by her wide acquaintance and powers of ferreting out all about people, kept Mrs. Allen well supplied with provender for the Egyptian and other familiar spirits who hovered about Chillingworth Street.
Mr. Mole never attended the _séances_, but he frequently saw the ex-nurse, and, by judicious hints, secured to himself the benefits of her niece's co-operation.
He needed her no longer, Each day it grew more plain; First with a startled wonder, Then with a wondering pain. --_Proctor._
"You are sick, that's sure"--they say; "Sick of what?"--they disagree. "'Tis the brain"--thinks Doctor A; "'Tis the heart"--holds Doctor B; "The liver--my life I'd lay!" "The lungs!" "The lights!" Ah me! --_Browning._
Mr. Crowe was an intensely selfish man, but he had never found his favourite vice a profitable one. Regardless of the feelings of others, he found all the world against him; and his heart, entertaining no good company, was occupied by the evil tenants always on the look-out for such lodgings.
His marriage had brought him nothing but disappointment; his wife, finding him at first indifferent to her society, became at last herself unfit to entertain any one. Her life was no less a burden to herself than to him.
Neglected, and all but ignored, her temper became daily more intolerable; and soon, from a bright, happy woman, she became a morose and shrewish invalid, occupied only with the thoughts of her wrongs.