Well, he asked himself to lunch, and looked over the house, and
decided to ask Miss Emily if she would sell an old Japanese cabinet
inlaid with mother of pearl that I would not have had as a gift.
And, in the end, I told him my trouble, of the fear that seemed to
center around the telephone, and the sleep-walking.

He listened carefully.

"Ever get any bad news over the telephone?" he asked.

One way and another, I said I had had plenty of it. He went over
me thoroughly, and was inclined to find my experience with the
flour rather amusing than otherwise. "It's rather good, that,"
he said. "Setting a trap to catch yourself. You'd better have
Maggie sleep in your room for a while. Well, it's all pretty
plain, Miss Agnes. We bury some things as deep as possible,
especially if we don't want to remember that they ever happened.
But the mind's a queer thing. It holds on pretty hard, and burying
is not destroying. Then we get tired or nervous--maybe just
holding the thing down and pretending it is not there makes us
nervous--and up it pops, like the ghost of a buried body, and
raises hell. You don't mind that, do you?" he added anxiously.
"It's exactly what those things do raise."

"But," I demanded irritably, "who rings the telephone at night?
I daresay you don't contend that I go out at night and call the
house, and then come back and answer the call, do you?"

He looked at me with a maddening smile.