“Then they would be like the feet I saw in my dream last night.”

“Whose feet were they?”

“Jesus’ feet.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You must finish yours first, please, Euphra.”

So Euphra went on: 

“I got dreadfully lame.  And the wind ran after me, and caught me again, and took me in his great blue ghostly arms, and shook me about, and then dropped me again to go on.  But it was very hard to go on, and I couldn’t stop; and there was no use in stopping, for the wind was everywhere in a moment.  Then suddenly I saw before me a great cataract, all in white, falling flash from a precipice; and I thought with myself, ’I will go into the cataract, and it will beat my life out, and then the wind will not get me any more.’  So I hastened towards it, but the wind caught me many times before I got near it.  At last I reached it, and threw myself down into the basin it had hollowed out of the rocks.  But as I was falling, something caught me gently, and held me fast, and it was not the wind.  I opened my eyes, and behold!  I was in my mother’s arms, and she was clasping me to her breast; for what I had taken for a cataract falling into a gulf, was only my mother, with her white grave-clothes floating all about her, standing up in her grave, to look after me.  ‘It was time you came home, my darling,’ she said, and stooped down into her grave with me in her arms.  And oh!  I was so happy; and her bosom was not cold, or her arms hard, and she carried me just like a baby.  And when she stooped down, then a door opened somewhere in the grave, I could not find out where exactly —­ and in a moment after, we were sitting together in a summer grove, with the tree-tops steeped in sunshine, and waving about in a quiet loving wind —­ oh, how different from the one that chased me home! —­ and we underneath in the shadow of the trees.  And then I said, ‘Mother, I’ve hurt my feet.’”

“Did you call her mother when you were a little girl?” interposed Harry.

“No,” answered Euphra.  “I called her mamma, like other children; but in my dreams I always call her mother.”

“And what did she say?”

“She said —­ ‘Poor child!’ —­ and held my feet to her bosom; and after that, when I looked at them, the bleeding was all gone, and I was not lame any more.”

Euphra, paused with a sigh.

“Oh, Harry!  I do not like to be lame.”

“What more?” said Harry, intent only on the dream.

“Oh! then I was so happy, that I woke up directly.”

“What a pity!  But if it should come true?”

“How could it come true, dear Harry?”

“Why, this world is sometimes cold, and the road is hard —­ you know what I mean, Euphra.”

“Yes, I do.”

“I wish I could dream dreams like that!  How clever you must be!”

“But you dream dreams, too, Harry.  Tell me yours.”

“Oh, no, I never dream dreams; the dreams dream me,” answered Harry, with a smile.