‘Hadn’t you better give up your work?’ he said.

Emma raised her head.  In the few moments of repose her eyelids had drooped with growing heaviness; she looked at him as if she had just been awakened to some great surprise.

‘Give up work?  How can I?’

’I think I would.  You’d have more time to give to Jane, and you could sleep in the day.  And Jane had better not begin again after this.  Don’t you think it would be better if you left these lodgings and took a house, where there’d be plenty of room and fresh air?’

‘Richard, what are you talking about?’

He laughed, quietly, on account of the sleeping children.

‘How would you like,’ he continued, ’to go and live in the country?  Kate and Jane could have a house of their own, you know—­in London, I mean, a house like ours; they could let a room or two if they chose.  Then you and I could go where we liked.  I was down in the Midland Counties yesterday; had to go on business; and I saw a house that would just suit us.  It’s a bit large; I daresay there’s sixteen or twenty rooms.  And there’s trees growing all about it; a big garden—­’

Emma dropped her head again and laughed, happy that Richard should jest with her so good-humouredly; for he did not often talk in the lighter way.  She had read of such houses in the weekly story-papers.  It must be nice to live in them; it must be nice to be a denizen of Paradise.

‘I’m in earnest, Emma.’

His voice caused her to gaze at him again.

‘Bring a chair,’ he said, ’and I’ll tell you something that’ll—­keep you awake.’

The insensible fellow!  Her sweet, pale, wondering face was so close to his, the warmth of her drooping frame was against his heart—­ arid he bade her sit apart to listen.

She placed herself as he desired, sitting with her hands together in her lap, her countenance troubled a little, wishing to smile, yet not quite venturing.  And he told his story, told it in all details, with figures that filled the mouth, that rolled forth like gold upon the bank-scales.

‘This is mine,’ he said, ‘mine and yours.’

Have you seen a child listening to a long fairy tale, every page a new adventure of wizardry, a story of elf, or mermaid, or gnome, of treasures underground guarded by enchanted monsters, of bells heard silverly in the depth of old forests, of castles against the sunset, of lakes beneath the quiet moon?  Know you how light gathers in the eyes dreaming on vision after vision, ever more intensely realised, yet ever of an unknown world?  How, when at length the reader’s voice is silent, the eyes still see, the ears still hear, until a movement breaks the spell, and with a deep, involuntary sigh the little one gazes here and there, wondering?

So Emma listened, and so she came back to consciousness, looking about the room, incredulous.  Had she been overcome with weariness?  Had she slept and dreamt?