When the girls got back to Echo Lodge they found that Miss Lavendar and Paul had carried the little square table out of the kitchen to the garden and had everything ready for tea.  Nothing ever tasted so delicious as those strawberries and cream, eaten under a great blue sky all curdled over with fluffy little white clouds, and in the long shadows of the wood with its lispings and its murmurings.  After tea Anne helped Charlotta wash the dishes in the kitchen, while Miss Lavendar sat on the stone bench with Paul and heard all about his rock people.  She was a good listener, this sweet Miss Lavendar, but just at the last it struck Paul that she had suddenly lost interest in the Twin Sailors.

“Miss Lavendar, why do you look at me like that?” he asked gravely.

“How do I look, Paul?”

“Just as if you were looking through me at somebody I put you in mind of,” said Paul, who had such occasional flashes of uncanny insight that it wasn’t quite safe to have secrets when he was about.

“You do put me in mind of somebody I knew long ago,” said Miss Lavendar dreamily.

“When you were young?”

“Yes, when I was young.  Do I seem very old to you, Paul?”

“Do you know, I can’t make up my mind about that,” said Paul confidentially.  “Your hair looks old . . .  I never knew a young person with white hair.  But your eyes are as young as my beautiful teacher’s when you laugh.  I tell you what, Miss Lavendar” . . .  Paul’s voice and face were as solemn as a judge’s . . .  “I think you would make a splendid mother.  You have just the right look in your eyes . . . the look my little mother always had.  I think it’s a pity you haven’t any boys of your own.”

“I have a little dream boy, Paul.”

“Oh, have you really?  How old is he?”

“About your age I think.  He ought to be older because I dreamed him long before you were born.  But I’ll never let him get any older than eleven or twelve; because if I did some day he might grow up altogether and then I’d lose him.”

“I know,” nodded Paul.  “That’s the beauty of dream-people . . . they stay any age you want them.  You and my beautiful teacher and me myself are the only folks in the world that I know of that have dream-people.  Isn’t it funny and nice we should all know each other?  But I guess that kind of people always find each other out.  Grandma never has dream-people and Mary Joe thinks I’m wrong in the upper story because I have them.  But I think it’s splendid to have them.  You know, Miss Lavendar.  Tell me all about your little dream-boy.”

“He has blue eyes and curly hair.  He steals in and wakens me with a kiss every morning.  Then all day he plays here in the garden . . . and I play with him.  Such games as we have.  We run races and talk with the echoes; and I tell him stories.  And when twilight comes . . .”

“I know,” interrupted Paul eagerly.  “He comes and sits beside you . . .  So . . . because of course at twelve he’d be too big to climb into your lap . . . and lays his head on your shoulder . . .  So . . . and you put your arms about him and hold him tight, tight, and rest your cheek on his head . . . yes, that’s the very way.  Oh, you do know, Miss Lavendar.”