She sat up, resting on her elbow, and her breathing came short and fast.
“It does not—melt away,” she panted. “Oh, I never had such a dream before.” She scarcely dared to stir; but at last she pushed the bedclothes aside, and put her feet on the floor with a rapturous smile.
“I am dreaming—I am getting out of bed,” she heard her own voice say; and then, as she stood up in the midst of it all, turning slowly from side to side—“I am dreaming it stays—real! I’m dreaming it feels real. It’s bewitched—or I’m bewitched. I only think I see it all.” Her words began to hurry themselves. “If I can only keep on thinking it,” she cried, “I don’t care! I don’t care!”
She stood panting a moment longer, and then cried out again.
“Oh, it isn’t true!” she said. “It can’t be true! But oh, how true it seems!”
The blazing fire drew her to it, and she knelt down and held out her hands close to it—so close that the heat made her start back.
“A fire I only dreamed wouldn’t be hot,” she cried.
She sprang up, touched the table, the dishes, the rug; she went to the bed and touched the blankets. She took up the soft wadded dressing-gown, and suddenly clutched it to her breast and held it to her cheek.
“It’s warm. It’s soft!” she almost sobbed. “It’s real. It must be!”
She threw it over her shoulders, and put her feet into the slippers.
“They are real, too. It’s all real!” she cried. “I am not—I am not dreaming!”
She almost staggered to the books and opened the one which lay upon the top. Something was written on the flyleaf—just a few words, and they were these:
“To the little girl in the attic. From a friend.”
When she saw that—wasn’t it a strange thing for her to do?—she put her face down upon the page and burst into tears.
“I don’t know who it is,” she said; “but somebody cares for me a little. I have a friend.”
She took her candle and stole out of her own room and into Becky’s, and stood by her bedside.
“Becky, Becky!” she whispered as loudly as she dared. “Wake up!”
When Becky wakened, and she sat upright staring aghast, her face still smudged with traces of tears, beside her stood a little figure in a luxurious wadded robe of crimson silk. The face she saw was a shining, wonderful thing. The Princess Sara—as she remembered her—stood at her very bedside, holding a candle in her hand.
“Come,” she said. “Oh, Becky, come!”
Becky was too frightened to speak. She simply got up and followed her, with her mouth and eyes open, and without a word.
And when they crossed the threshold, Sara shut the door gently and drew her into the warm, glowing midst of things which made her brain reel and her hungry senses faint.
“It’s true! It’s true!” she cried. “I’ve touched them all. They are as real as we are. The Magic has come and done it, Becky, while we were asleep—the Magic that won’t let those worst things ever quite happen.”
XVI
The Visitor
Imagine, if you can, what the rest of the evening was like. How they crouched by the fire which blazed and leaped and made so much of itself in the little grate. How they removed the covers of the dishes, and found rich, hot, savory soup, which was a meal in itself, and sandwiches and toast and muffins enough for both of them. The mug from the washstand was used as Becky’s teacup, and the tea was so delicious that it was not necessary to pretend that it was anything else but tea. They were warm and full-fed and happy, and it was just like Sara that, having found her strange good fortune real, she should give herself up to the enjoyment of it to the utmost. She had lived such a life of imaginings that she was quite equal to accepting any wonderful thing that happened, and almost to cease, in a short time, to find it bewildering.
“I don’t know anyone in the world who could have done it,” she said; “but there has been someone. And here we are sitting by their fire—and—and—it’s true! And whoever it is—wherever they are—I have a friend, Becky—someone is my friend.”
It cannot be denied that as they sat before the blazing fire, and ate the nourishing, comfortable food, they felt a kind of rapturous awe, and looked into each other’s eyes with something like doubt.
“Do you think,” Becky faltered once, in a whisper—“do you think it could melt away, miss? Hadn’t we better be quick?” And she hastily crammed her sandwich into her mouth. If it was only a dream, kitchen manners would be overlooked.
“No, it won’t melt away,” said Sara. “I am eating this muffin, and I can taste it. You never really eat things in dreams. You only think you are going to eat them. Besides, I keep giving myself pinches; and I touched a hot piece of coal just now, on purpose.”
The sleepy comfort which at length almost overpowered them was a heavenly thing. It was the drowsiness of happy, well-fed childhood, and they sat in the fire-glow and luxuriated in it until Sara found herself turning to look at her transformed bed.
There were even blankets enough to share with Becky. The narrow couch in the
