It wasn't until a half hour later, after we'd taken possession of the two rooms the pub boasted for visitors, that Sarah continued the thought she'd started earlier.

"Your room is nicer than mine," she announced after admiring the view of grassy pastureland outside my windows. Sheep and cows dotted the landscape, the few trees set as windbreaks waving gently in the early summer breeze.

"I told you to take it, but you liked the other room better."

"It has much calmer feng shui," she said, turning back to me. "And speaking of that, I have decided we're going to have a bet."

"We are? Is there a casino around here? You know I suck at card games."

"Not that kind of a bet. We're going to have one between us. A wager."

"Oh?" I leaned back against the headboard as Sarah plumped herself down in the room's only chair. "About what?"

"I am going to bet you that, before the end of this trip, you will see something that you can't explain."

"Something like…quarks?" I asked, thinking back to our earlier conversation.

"No, you believe in those. I mean something you don't believe in, like spirits and UFOs and faeries. I will bet you that before the end of our trip, you will encounter something that can't be explained away as a hot air balloon, or settling house, or any of those other unimaginative excuses people like you come up with to explain the inexplicable."

I sat up a little straighter on the bed. There's nothing I loved like an intellectual challenge. "Well now, that's an interesting thought. But it's hardly fair for you to throw something like that at me without allowing the inverse."

"Inverse?" She frowned for a moment. "What do you mean?"

"You can't take me to a haunted house, and when I point out that the plumbing is archaic and responsible for making the suggested poltergeist knockings, refuse to allow that as a valid explanation. You have to be open to rational deductions as to the source of your mystical events."