The Book of Dreams and Ghosts

UNDER THE LAMP
I had given a glass ball to a young lady, who believed that she could play the “willing game” successfully without touching the person “willed,” and when the person did not even know that “willing” was going on. This lady, Miss Baillie, had scarcely any success with the ball. She lent it to Miss Leslie, who saw a large, square, old-fashioned red sofa covered with muslin, which she found in the next country house she visited. Miss Baillie’s brother, a young athlete (at short odds for the amateur golf championship), laughed at these experiments, took the ball into the study, and came back looking “gey gash”. He admitted that he had seen a vision, somebody he knew “under a lamp”. He would discover during the week whether he saw right or not. This was at 5.30 on a Sunday afternoon. On Tuesday, Mr. Baillie was at a dance in a town some forty miles from his home, and met a Miss Preston. “On Sunday,” he said, “about half-past five you were sitting under a standard lamp in a dress I never saw you wear, a blue blouse with lace over the shoulders, pouring out tea for a man in blue serge, whose back was towards me, so that I only saw the tip of his moustache.”