The other looked at her sharply.  “I’ve always avoided that sort of thing, and I don’t see it doing you much good, Bubbles!  You know how your father feels about it?”

Miss Farrow did not often interfere in other people’s affairs, but she had suddenly remembered certain phrases in her brother-in-law’s letter.

“Daddy has been put up to making a fuss by a goody-goody widow who’s making up to him just now.”  Bubbles spoke lightly, but she looked vexed.

Blanche Farrow felt sorry she had said anything.  Bubbles was behaving very nicely just now.  It was the greatest comfort to have her here.  So she said, smiling, “Oh, well, I shan’t regret your trying something of the kind if you can galvanize these dull folk into life.”

“I’ll do more than that,” said Bubbles easily.  “I’ll give them creeps!  But, Blanche?  I want you to back me up if I say I’m tired, or don’t want to go on with it.”

Blanche Farrow felt surprised.  “I don’t quite understand,” she exclaimed.  “Aren’t we going to do table-turning?”

“No,” said the girl deliberately.  “We’re going to have a seance—­a sitting.  And I’m going to be the medium.”

“Oh, Bubbles!  Is that wise?” She looked uncomfortably into the girl’s now eager, flushed face.  “D’you think you know enough about these people to be a success at it this very first evening?”

Bubbles’ gift of thought reading would of course come in; also the girl was a clever actress; still, that surely wouldn’t take her very far with a set of people of whom she knew nothing.

“The only one I’m afraid of,” said Bubbles thoughtfully, “is Mr. Burnaby.  He’s such a proper old thing!  He might really object—­object on the same ground as Daddy’s tiresome widow does.  However, I can but try.”

She pirouetted round, and quickly drew with her foot a gilt footstool from under an Empire settee.  She stood upon it and clapped her hands.  “Ladies and gentlemen!” she cried.  “This is a time of year when ghosts are said to walk.  Why shouldn’t we hold a seance, here and now, and call up spirits from the vasty deep?”

“But will they come?” quoted Sir Lyon, smiling up into her eager, sensitive little face.

Sir Lyon was quite enjoying Lionel Varick’s Christmas house-party.  For one thing, he was interested in his host’s personality.  In a small way he had long made a study of Lionel Varick, and it amused him to see Varick in a new role—­that of a prosperous country gentleman.

Suddenly Bubbles found an ally in a most unexpected quarter.  Helen Brabazon called out:  “I’ve always longed to attend a seance!  I did once go to a fortune-teller, and it was thrilling—.”

Bubbles stepped down off her footstool.  She had the gift—­which her aunt also possessed—­of allowing another to take the field.

“If it was so exciting,” said Lionel Varick dryly, “I wonder that you only went once, Miss Brabazon.”