her during the first month of the visit.

[13]

[14]

[14]

In her first attempts at comforting the child, and many times since, Aunt India had reminded Holly that now that her father had reached Heaven he and her mother were together once more, and that since they had loved each other very dearly on earth they were beyond doubt very happy in Paradise. Aunt India assured her that it was a beautiful thought. But it had never impressed Holly as Miss India thought it should. Possibly she was too self-absorbed in her sorrow to consider it judicially. But one night she had a dream from which she awoke murmuring happily in the darkness. She could not remember very clearly what she had dreamed, although she strove hard to do so. But she knew that it was a beautiful dream, a dream in which her father and her mother,—the wonderful mother of whom she had no recollection,—had appeared to her hand in hand and had spoken loving, comforting words. For the first time she realized Aunt India’s meaning; realized how very, very happy her father and mother must be together[15] in Heaven, and how silly and selfish she had been to wish him back. All in the instant there, in the dim silence, the dull ache of loneliness which had oppressed her for months disappeared. She no longer seemed alone; somewhere,—near at hand,—was sympathy and love and heart-filling comradeship. Holly lay for awhile very quiet and happy in the great four-poster bed, and stared into the darkness with wide eyes that swam in grateful tears. Then she fell into a sound, calm sleep.

[15]

She did not tell Aunt India of her dream; not because there was any lack of sympathy between them, but because to have shared it would have robbed it of half its dearness. For a long, long time it was the most precious of her possessions, and she hugged it to her and smiled over it as a mother over her child. And so I think it was the dream that accomplished what the Old Doctor could not,—the dream that brought, as dreams so often do, Heaven very close to earth. Dreams are blessed things, be they day-dreams or dreams of the night; and[16] even the ugly ones are beneficent, since at waking they make by contrast reality more endurable.

[16]

If Aunt India never learned the cause she was at least quick to note the result. Holly’s thin little cheeks borrowed tints from the Duchess roses in the garden, and Aunt India graciously gave the credit to 

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