--to go to the City to take music, or go anywheres
else. I never had any what you might call rill pleasure excep' walkin'
in the Depot Woods. That was a gully grove beyond the railroad track,
an' I use' to like to sit in there some, by myself. I wasn't ever rill
happy, though, them days, but in the dream--oh, I was happy, like on a
nice mornin', only more so."

Calliope looked at me fleetingly, as if she were measuring my ability to
understand.

"The funny part of it was," she said, "that in the dream I wasn't _me_
at all. Not me, as you know me. I thought somehow _I_ was that poet in
my picture, the man in the steel engravin' with a look like he see
heaven. An' it didn't seem strange to me, but just like it had always
been so. I thought I rilly was that poet that I'd looked at in the
picture all my life. But then I guess after all that part wasn't so
funny as the rest of it. For down at the end o' the road somebody was
waitin' for me under trees all in blossom, like the picture, too. It was
a girl, standin' there. An' I thought I looked at her--I, the poet, you
know--an' I see that the girl was me, Calliope Marsh, lookin' just like
I looked every day, natural as anything. Like you see yourself in the
glass.

"I know I wasn't su'prised at all. We met like we was friends, both
livin' here in the village, an' we walked down the road together like it
had always been that way. An' we talked--like you do when you're with
them you'd rather be with than anybody else. I thought we was goin'
somewhere to see somebody, an' we talked about that:--

"'Will They be home, do you think?' I says.

"An' the girl that was me says: 'Oh, yes. They'll be home. They're
always home,' she told me. An' we both felt pleased, like when you're
sure.

"An' then--oh," Calliope cried, "I wish I could remember what we said. I
wish I could remember. I know it was something that seemed beautiful,
an' the words come all soft. It was like bein' born again, somewheres
else. An' we knew just exactly what each other meant, an' that was best
of all."

She hesitated, seeking to explain that to me.

"When I was twenty," she said, "I use' to want to talk about things that
wasn't commonly mentioned here in Friendship--I mean, well, like little
things I'd read about noted people an' what they said an' done--an' like
that. But when you brought 'em up in the conversation, folks always
thought you was tryin' to show off. An' if you quoted a verse o' poetry