The Bewitched Ermentrude.
Very many years ago now I was santering down historic old South Street one November afternoon, my object being to lunch in one of the quaint houses with my old time friend, Harold Slitherwick. Lunch was not, however, the main object of my visit, but to meet a man called Reginald Saedegar, an ex-Indian judge, who had actually seen a genuine spirit or ghost.
It is a sad, nay, a melancholy fact (for I have been told this by the very best authorities) that I am not Psychic, despite the fact that I have spent days and nights in gloomy, grimly-haunted chambers and ruins, and even a lonesome Hallowe'en night on the summit of St Rule's ancient Tower (my only companions being sandwiches, matches, some cigars, and the necessary and indispensable flask), yet, alas! I have never heard or seen anything the least abnormal, or felt the necessary, or much-talked-of mystic presence.
Arrived at the old mansion, I was duly ushered in by Slitherwick's butler, one Joe Bingworthy, a man with the manner and appearance of an archbishop, and from whom one always seemed to expect a sort of pontifical blessing.
There were several fellows there, and I was speedily made known to Sædeger, a very cheery, pleasant little person, with dark hair and big eyebrows.
There was a very heated discussion going on when I entered as to what was really a properly constituted Cathedral. Darkwood was shouting, "No Bishop's Chair, no Cathedral." "If," he said, "a Bishop had his chair in a tiny chapel, it was a Cathedral, but if a religious building was as big as the Crystal Palace, and there was no Bishop's Chair there, it was not one bit a Cathedral."
I stopped this discussion suddenly by asking Sædegar
