e
would tease him about his sudden change of front, and treat him to a
pantomimic imitation of his former gloomy frowns. The prospect pleased
her, and she laughed again, showing the pretty dimples in her cheek,
while Jack Melland looked at her inquiringly.

"What's the joke? May I hear it?"

"Oh, nothing--I was just imagining! All sorts of things fly through
one's head, especially to-day, when we really are in an exciting
position. At home my sister and I have a very quiet time, and we get
most of our excitement in dreams. We imagine things until they are
almost real. Don't you know the feeling?"

"No!" cried Mr Melland bluntly. His brows were arched, his nostrils
curved with the old look of scornful superiority. "I have no experience
of the kind, and I don't want to have. It's a dangerous habit. We have
to live among realities, and very commonplace realities, for the most
part; and it unfits one for work to be dreaming of impossibilities."

"No, no, no; it helps one! It is like a tonic which braces one up for
the ordinary routine."

"It is like a sleeping draught--agreeable for the time, but mischievous
and relaxing in its after effects."

Grey eyes met blue with a flash of defiance, then softened into smiles.

"It depends upon disposition," said Mollie firmly. "We find nothing
relaxing about it, but a great deal of innocent amusement. When we are
out shopping and want something badly and can't have it, because it
costs five shillings and we only possess half a crown, Ruth says to me,
`Let's pretend a letter arrived by the afternoon post to say someone had
left us a million pounds! What would you do first of all?' Then we can
talk about it for the rest of the walk, and decide what dresses we would
have, and where we should live, and the papers we should have in the
entertaining room, and the furniture in our bedrooms; and we choose
things out of all the shop-windows as we pass, and decide where they
shall go. I've furnished my house so often that I really know the
rooms, and love them into the bargain."

"And when you go back into the real house you are discontented and
amazed at the contrast."

"Oh dear, no! That would be silly. I am so refreshed by my visit to
the castle that I can laugh over the shabbiness which annoyed me before.
You don't think it wrong to read an interesting book? Very well, then,
why is it wrong to indulge in a little fiction on one's own account?"

"Wrong is rathe