lady in her black dress with the white lace, and her silvery hair mingling with the moonlight, so that you could not have told which was which. 'Come in, Irene,' she said again. 'Can you tell me what I am spinning?'

'She speaks,' thought Irene, 'just as if she had seen me five minutes ago, or yesterday at the farthest. --No,' she answered; 'I don't know what you are spinning.  Please, I thought you were a dream.  Why couldn't I find you before, great-great-grandmother?'

'That you are hardly old enough to understand.  But you would have found me sooner if you hadn't come to think I was a dream.  I will give you one reason though why you couldn't find me.  I didn't want you to find me.'

'Why, please?'

'Because I did not want Lootie to know I was here.'

'But you told me to tell Lootie.'

'Yes.  But I knew Lootie would not believe you.  If she were to see me sitting spinning here, she wouldn't believe me, either.'

'Why?'

'Because she couldn't.  She would rub her eyes, and go away and say she felt queer, and forget half of it and more, and then say it had been all a dream.'

'Just like me,' said Irene, feeling very much ashamed of herself.

'Yes, a good deal like you, but not just like you; for you've come again; and Lootie wouldn't have come again.  She would have said, No, no--she had had enough of such nonsense.'

'Is it naughty of Lootie, then?'

'It would be naughty of you.  I've never done anything for Lootie.'

'And you did wash my face and hands for me,' said Irene, beginning to cry.

The old lady smiled a sweet smile and said:

'I'm not vexed with you, my child--nor with Lootie either.  But I don't want you to say anything more to Lootie about me.  If she should ask you, you must just be silent.  But I do not think she will ask you.'

All the time they talked the old lady kept on spinning.

 Prev. P 38/127 next