y looked for more work.
When he said last week, 'Bessie, I have sent for Brother Pennyman
concerning a visitation in the night,' I was so glad, for, Winnie
dear--would you believe it?--I have been dreaming too, and I want you to
tell me if I have read my dream aright."

Now, this was the most wonderful thing that Bessie Haines could have told
me--the most startling and least to be expected altogether; for if ever
there was a wide-awake girl, it was she.

I suppose my perfectly frank stare said as much, for she blushed a little,
and continued with a very suspicious flutter, which I had learnt, in the
case of young engaged persons I knew, to look on as a bad symptom:

"I do not mean dreaming with my eyes shut, you know, but having deep,
serious thoughts, unlike the gay fancies that have held me captive all my
life."

"Dress trimmings and poetry?" I suggested.

"Yes, yes--all the useless, perishable fancies of thoughtless youth," she
replied.

This sounded more like an Essay on Vanity than Bessie Haines, and I really
was astonished, and had nothing to say for a little while, during which
she, being full of her subject, went on:

"I can scarcely trace the beginning of the--the awakening, shall I call
it?"

"You called it a dream before."

"Yes, dear Winnie, but it is so hard to know how to classify new emotions,
and this is such a peculiar one that it seems nameless. You know papa
feels bound, ever since that water-dream he had, to go down to the
Mariners' Chapel on Sunday afternoon, and I used to read solemn poetry
when it was too warm or too cold to go with him. Well, about two months
ago it was fearfully warm, and papa had come home a fortnight earlier from
the shore, on account of a suspicion he had that he had dreamed something
and had forgotten it as soon as he awoke. This indistinct warning made him
think we had better go home at all events, and home we came the first week
in September, to the roasting, dusty city. But I did not then know that I
was perhaps drawn back for a purpose; and oh, dear Winnie, there may be
something in papa's visions, after all."

"He has had a good many of them," I said.

"So he has," assented Bessie; "and I was inclined to be impatient at this
one, since it brought me home in the heat, and the house seemed so lonely,
because Mrs. Tanner was still in the country with her married daughter."

"She having received no spectral warning," I hinted.

"Oh dear! no. Mrs. Tanner neve