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You are either a most extraordinary... But no " "I could change it into anything," said Mr. Fotheringay. "Just anything. Here! be a pigeon, will you?" In another moment a blue pigeon was fluttering round the room and making Mr. Maydig duck every time it came near him. "Stop there, will you?" said Mr. Fotheringay; and the pigeon hung motionless in the air.
"Joshua," said Mr. Maydig. "Why not? Stop it." Mr. Fotheringay looked at the moon. "That's a bit tall," he said, after a pause. "Why not?" said Mr. Maydig. "Of course it doesn't stop. You stop the rotation of the earth, you know. Time stops. It isn't as if we were doing harm." "H'm!" said Mr. Fotheringay. "Well," he sighed, "I'll try. Here!"
"If I might make free with something here, I think I might show you by a sort of experiment," said Mr. Fotheringay. "Now, take that tobacco-jar on the table, for instance. What I want to know is whether what I am going to do with it is a miracle or not. Just half a minute, Mr. Maydig, please." He knitted his brows, pointed to the tobacco-jar and said: "Be a bowl of vi'lets."
Maydig was enlarging on the changes he might expect in his housekeeper next day, with an optimism, that seemed even to Mr. Fotheringay's supper senses a little forced and hectic, when a series of confused noises from upstairs began. Their eyes exchanged interrogations, and Mr. Maydig left the room hastily. Mr.
Fotheringay; "it's this I'm most mijitly in want of advice for; of course he's at San Francisco wherever San Francisco may be but of course it's awkward for both of us, as you'll see, Mr. Maydig. I don't see how he can understand what has happened, and I daresay he's scared and exasperated something tremendous, and trying to get at me. I daresay he keeps on starting off to come here.
For the most part he was thinking of Winch. On Sunday evening he went to chapel, and oddly enough, Mr. Maydig, who took a certain interest in occult matters, preached about "things that are not lawful." Mr. Fotheringay was not a regular chapel goer, but the system of assertive scepticism, to which I have already alluded, was now very much shaken.
Maydig, waving the Winch difficulty aside, unfolded a series of wonderful proposals proposals he invented as he went along. Now what those proposals were does not concern the essentials of this story. Suffice it that they were designed in a spirit of infinite benevolence, the sort of benevolence that used to be called post-prandial. Suffice it, too, that the problem of Winch remained unsolved.
And so, incredible as it may seem, in the study of the little house behind the Congregational Chapel, on the evening of Sunday, Nov. 10, 1896, Mr. Fotheringay, egged on and inspired by Mr. Maydig, began to work miracles. The reader's attention is specially and definitely called to the date.
Fotheringay was certainly ill-laid and uninviting as refreshment for two industrious miracle-workers; but they were seated, and Mr. Maydig was descanting in sorrow rather than in anger upon his housekeeper's shortcomings, before it occurred to Mr. Fotheringay that an opportunity lay before him. "Don't you think, Mr. Maydig," he said, "if it isn't a liberty, I " "My dear Mr. Fotheringay! Of course!
A great roaring of wind and waters filled earth and sky, and, peering under his hand through the dust and sleet to windward, he saw by the play of the lightnings a vast wall of water pouring towards him. "Maydig!" screamed Mr. Fotheringay's feeble voice amid the elemental uproar. "Here! Maydig! "Stop!" cried Mr. Fotheringay to the advancing water. "Oh, for goodness' sake, stop!
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