said Aunt Indiana.

"Fairies--"

"Where?"

"When I've been asleep."

"There never was any fairies in my dreams," said Aunt Indiana.

No, there were not. The German Tunker and the prairie Indian might see
fairies, but the hard-working Yankee pioneer had no faculties for
creative fancy. Her fairy was the plow that breaks the ground, or the
axe that fells the timber. Yet the German soul-tale seemed to haunt her,
and she at last said:

"I wish that we had more such stories as that. It is pleasant talk. Abe
Lincoln tells such things out of the Pilgrim's Progress. He's all
imagination, just like you and the Indians. People who don't have much
to do run to such things. I suppose that he has read that Pilgrim's
Progress over a dozen times."

"I have observed that the boy had ideals," said Jasper.

"What's them?" said Aunt Indiana.

"People build life out of ideals," said Jasper. "A cathedral is an ideal
before it is a form. So is a house, a glass--everything. He has the
creative imagination."

"Yes--that's what I said: always going around with a book in his hand,
as though he was walking on the air."

"His step-mother says that he's one of the best of boys. He does
everything that he can for her, and he has never given her an unkind
word. He loves his step-mother like an own mother, and he forgets
himself for others. These are good signs."

"Signs--signs! Stop your cobblin', elder, and let me prophesy! That boy
just takes after his father, and he will never amount to anything in
this world or any other. His mother what is dead was a good woman--an
awful good woman; but she was sort o' visionary. They say that she used
to see things at camp-meetin's, and lose her strength, and have far-away
visions. She might have seen fairies. But she was an awful good
woman--good to everybody, and everybody loved her; and we were all sorry
when she died, and we all love her grave yet. It is queer, but we all
seem to love her grave. A sermon goes better when it is preached there
under the great trees. Some folks had rather hear a sermon preached
there than at the meetin'-house. Some people leave a kind o' influence;
_Miss_ Linken did. The boy means well--his heart is all right, like his
poor dead mother's was--but he hasn't got any head on 'im, like as I
have. He hasn't got any calculation. And now, elder, I'm goin' to say
it, though I'm sorry to: he'll never amount to shucks! There, now!
Josiah Crawford says so, too."

"Ther