"When she knows you better," he said, "you will find my sister Kate
more than your match."
"If I were a talker," she answered, "Mr. Grant would be too much for
me: he quite bewilders me! What do you think! he has been actually
trying to persuade me--"
"I beg your pardon, Miss Graeme; I have been trying to persuade you
of nothing."
"What! not to believe in ghosts and necromancy and witchcraft and
the evil eye and ghouls and vampyres, and I don't know what all out
of nursery stories and old annuals?"
"I give you my word, Mr. Graeme," returned Donal, laughing, "I have
not been persuading your sister of any of these things! I am
certain she could be persuaded of nothing of which she did not first
see the common sense. What I did dwell upon, without a doubt she
would accept it, was the evident fact that writing and printing have
done more to bring us into personal relations with the great dead,
than necromancy, granting the magician the power he claimed, could
ever do. For do we not come into contact with the being of a man
when we hear him pour forth his thoughts of the things he likes best
to think about, into the ear of the universe? In such a position
does the book of a great man place us!--That was what I meant to
convey to your sister."
"And," said Mr. Graeme, "she was not such a goose as to fail of
understanding you, however she may have chosen to put on the garb of
stupidity.
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