XVIII—Merry Christmas
“ My dear Young Friend,” said Father Time, as he laid his hand gently upon my shoulder, “you are entirely wrong.”
Then I looked up over my shoulder from the table at which I was sitting and I saw him.
But I had known, or felt, for at least the last half-hour that he was standing somewhere near me.
You have had, I do not doubt, good reader, more than once that strange uncanny feeling that there is some one unseen standing beside you, in a darkened room, let us say, with a dying fire, when the night has grown late, and the October wind sounds low outside, and when, through the thin curtain that we call Reality, the Unseen World starts for a moment clear upon our dreaming sense.
You have had it? Yes, I know you have. Never mind telling me about it. Stop. I don’t want to hear about that strange presentiment you had the night your Aunt Eliza
