, strange life and stirred
her imagination.

"I shall think of you," she answered with sweet earnestness, "as if
you were the boy--a man--I don't know how to say just what I mean, but
perhaps you'll understand--as if you were the man who had grown up out
of the dreams I used to have about my boy.

"Don't think," she added hastily, "that I'm displeased or dissatisfied
with Felix, because I'm not, though what I've said might give that
impression. He is a good son and I am proud and glad to be his mother.
But a mother has so many dreams about a son when he is little that no
boy could possibly fulfill all of them. He must follow his own bent,
and the other things she has dreamed for him must be left behind. So
I'll just feel as if, in some mysterious way, those dreams had come
alive in you. And--oh, Penelope! Do you remember what I said a little
while ago, when we saw Mr. Gordon coming toward us out of the storm,
that it was just like someone taking form and shape in a dream? I'll
think of you as my dream son, Mr. Gordon--Hugh!"

Impulsively he seized her hand again and held it closely clasped in
both of his. "Will you do that? Will you think of me in that way?"

Penelope, in her wheel chair beside them, fidgeted her weak, misshapen
body. Her nerves were tense with an excitement which she knew was not
all due merely to an unexpected call from a stranger. Unaccustomed
emotions, strong but undefined, were filling her breast and tugging
at her heart. To her sharpened perception it seemed almost as if
something uncanny were hovering in the room. She shivered and leaned
back wearily. What spell was coming over them? Were those two beside
her, strangers until an hour ago, about to sink sobbing into each
other's arms? And was she, Penelope, the calm and self-mastered, about
to shriek hysterically?

"How ghostly you two are becoming," she exclaimed, with an effort at
vivacity, "with your dreams and your spirits! You make me afraid that
Mr. Gordon, substantial as he looks, will melt away into thin air
before our very eyes!"

"We are getting wrought up, aren't we?" Gordon assented as he turned
to her. "And you are pale, Penelope! I hope I haven't tired you too
much. Seeing you both, and your being so kind, have meant a lot to me,
more than you can guess. And if your mother is going to be my dream
mother, Penelope, you'll be my dream sister, won't you?"

He smiled as he said this, then all three laughed a little, more to
less