My friend Bessie Haines had no mother, but her father was such a very large man that I remember thinking, when I was quite a child, that a kind Providence had intended to make up her loss in that way.  She and I did not live in the same city, but managed to keep up a lively friendship through the medium of correspondence and half-yearly visits.

I was a complete orphan, and my uncle, with whom I lived, was her father’s attached friend.She had a very happy home, and I was glad to enjoy it with her, particularly when my uncle accompanied me, for then her father and he became absorbed in each other, and left us to our own devices not very evil ones, but too childish and trifling to claim the sympathy of such very grave men as they were.

We had both become tall, womanly girls, but Uncle Pennyman and Mr. Haines called us children, and treated us as such; and Bessie was just writing to me about her father’s telling her she must begin to think of serious things, when my uncle remarked to me that the time was approaching when I should prepare myself to assume the duties and responsibilities of a rational female.Just as if we had waited to be told this, when in fact Bessie and I had been consulting about our bonnets and dresses in the most grave and mature manner for years past, and arranging our future on plans that for variety and agreeability could not have been surpassed had we been brought up on the Arabian Nights and Moore’s Poems, instead of Baxter’s Saint’s Rest and Pollok’s Course of Time.

“There are several questions of vital importance that have been growing daily stronger in my mind,” said my uncle Pennyman.“My friend Thomas Haines has a gift in clearing points and expounding meanings; so that I feel it to be for my mind’s edifying and my soul’s profit to go to him for counsel.”

I was delighted to hear this.  I wanted to see Bessie, and I blessed the bond that united these good brothers in Israel and drew us together so often.Mr. Haines was good at texts, and my uncle was wonderfully expert at dreams.Mr. Haines was a great dreamer, and my uncle constantly stumbled over passages needing elucidation.So we lived in harmonious intercourse, and Bessie and I talked of all our plans and delights while they got themselves entangled in obscurities with a commentary under each arm.

It would have appeared, from Mr. Haines’ dreams, that Bessie’s mother had been a most fussy and bothering lady, though I was told by the housekeeper, who knew her well, that she was the mildest and most timid of little wives while living.

According to these visions, she was constantly troubled in her spiritual state on the greatest variety of small subjects; and my expert uncle, in expounding her communications, was always able to draw from them strong religious lessons, and to administer much strengthening comfort to his friend the dreamer.

“I was hoping papa would soon have a vision,” said Bessie when we were settled together all comfortably, and she had told me how glad she was to see me again.“Mrs. Tanner said last week that she was sure he was going to have another, because the spire which he felt he was directed in his last dream to put on the little chapel was all complete, and the missionary outfit which he had believed himself called upon to provide was ready and gone to the South Seas, and he naturally looked for more work.When he said last week, ’Bessie, I have sent for Brother Pennyman concerning a visitation in the night,’ I was so glad, for, Winnie dear would you believe it? I have been dreaming too, and I want you to tell me if I have read my dream aright.”

Now, this was the most wonderful thing that Bessie Haines could have told me the most startling and least to be expected altogether; for if ever there was a wide-awake girl, it was she.

I suppose my perfectly frank stare said as much, for she blushed a little, and continued with a very suspicious flutter, which I had learnt, in the case of young engaged persons I knew, to look on as a bad symptom: 

“I do not mean dreaming with my eyes shut, you know, but having deep, serious thoughts, unlike the gay fancies that have held me captive all my life.”

“Dress trimmings and poetry?” I suggested.

“Yes, yes all the useless, perishable fancies of thoughtless youth,” she replied.

This sounded more like an Essay on Vanity than Bessie Haines, and I really was astonished, and had nothing to say for a little while, during which she, being full of her subject, went on: 

“I can scarcely trace the beginning of the the awakening, shall I call it?”

“You called it a dream before.”

“Yes, dear Winnie, but it is so hard to know how to classify new emotions, and this is such a peculiar one that it seems nameless.  You know papa feels bound, ever since that water-dream he had, to go down to the Mariners’ Chapel on Sunday afternoon, and I used to read solemn poetry when it was too warm or too cold to go with him.  Well, about two months ago it was fearfully warm, and papa had come home a fortnight earlier from the shore, on account of a suspicion he had that he had dreamed something and had forgotten it as soon as he awoke.This indistinct warning made him think we had better go home at all events, and home we came the first week in September, to the roasting, dusty city.But I did not then know that I was perhaps drawn back for a purpose; and oh, dear Winnie, there may be something in papa’s visions, after all.”

“He has had a good many of them,” I said.

“So he has,” assented Bessie; “and I was inclined to be impatient at this one, since it brought me home in the heat, and the house seemed so lonely, because Mrs. Tanner was still in the country with her married daughter.”

“She having received no spectral warning,” I hinted.

“Oh dear! no.Mrs. Tanner never dreams:she’s opposed to it.  Well, the first Sunday was so warm that I took up Solemn Thoughts in Verse instead of the Mariners’; and after I had read eight pages, it really seemed as if I had better have tried the heat out of doors, it was getting so gloomy within.So I got up and dressed, meaning to walk out and meet papa, and return with him.I don’t know whether it was the Solemn Thoughts that confused me, or whether I was not paying attention, but I actually lost my way by turning at the wrong corner, and so came down Barton street toward a little chapel that I had often noticed before.Two dreadfully red-faced and short-haired little boys were at the entrance by the small iron gate.They had disagreed about something, I suppose, just as I came up, and they instantly began to fight, with the wickedest determination visible in their freckled little faces.At first, they kicked at each other, and growled out some awful words without the least sense, but with a great deal of profanity in them, and then they laid down their little books and tracts, and apparently tried to pull each other’s head off.Of course it made me quite wretched to see them hurt each other in that shocking way, and so I interfered and tried to reconcile them, but the naughty little souls must have had a certain amount of kicking and scratching on hand to dispose of, for they united in bestowing it all on me the moment I came between them.

“I was just trying to save my dress and lace sacque from their boots and claws, when a reverend gentleman appeared at the door, and the bad boys became sneaking cowards at sight of him.  I picked up their little tracts, while he tried to apologize for them; and it was so sad, Winnie, to think that those dear children had not profited by their lessons:one was called ‘Love One Another,’ and the other, ‘Be Meek and Lowly.’

“While we were talking a lady joined us, and I went into the school at their invitation.

“Winnie, do you know anything practical about Sunday-school?”

“I went to one, and was for years in the class of an elderly maiden lady who urged us all to learn Scripture and hymns.I was so expert and high in favor that I could repeat forty verses at a time as glibly as a parrot.”

“But I don’t quite mean that sort of thing,” said Bessie.“I mean a real, earnest teaching-place, where children are gathered in and told all about Christ’s love and mercy where they are softened and won to better thoughts and kinder actions, and their poor little minds filled with shining truth, instead of street dirt and abuse.”

“I never thought about it before, but such an institution could not help being a popular one, and a very useful one too,” I confessed.

“Oh, I am so glad, so very glad, that you approve, dear, for I am engaged in that work; and I did not want to write it to you, for somehow it seemed so strange for such a thoughtless, silly girl as I have been to attempt such a serious thing.”

“As teaching in a Sunday-school?”

“Yes, in a sort of mission school for little scholars of the lower classes.Miss Mary Pepper and I have at this time nearly two hundred boys and girls of all ages, and some of them are very interesting and lovable, while others are ”

“Like the two gladiators who introduced you to the scene?”

“Yes.I am afraid there are quite a number of that kind; but, Winnie, you must like Miss Mary Pepper.Oh, she is one of the most excellent women I ever knew, so truly, so nobly, so devotedly good.You cannot imagine what a comfort it is to me to be with her to feel that I am under her influence, and may learn from her to be a little like her.”

“Miss Mary Pepper?” I repeated:“then she is a young lady?”

“No not young:indeed, she is rather elderly.”

“An old maid,” I remarked, coldly.“She is pretty and sweet, though faded, I suppose.”

“Why, no not to look at:her nature is beautiful, but her manner and figure are rather rather unprepossessing at first.”

“A stiff, hard, straight-laced old maid,” I said, contemptuously.“Well, really, I cannot see the fascination ”

Bessie’s face flushed painfully:  “I confess that dear Miss Pepper’s person is not so beautiful as her nature, but, Winnie, it is the cause of doing good and trying to be good that draws us together so closely; and of course I do not love her as I love you, my dear, precious first friend.”

These last words were full of balm, for of course it was the sting of jealousy that had made my heart resent the venerable Pepper’s powerful influence over my dear Bessie.Being once assured that it was a second-rate power, and that I still held my supremacy, I entered into the Sunday-school question like a second Raikes, and volunteered to help, and try to learn the way to the young hearts that beat under the pugilistic exterior of the juveniles of Canon lane, where the mission chapel was.

Then, having become one on this serious subject, we began to wonder what Mr. Haines’ dream might portend this time, and prepare our minds for the verse from the prophecies over which dear Uncle Pennyman had made his latest stumble.

“Mrs. Tanner thinks it was something about a journey, and she is quite out of sorts on the subject:for, as she says, the house can’t be shut up without worriment, and as to staying in it alone she really has not got the nerve.”

“I do not think that Uncle Pennyman will interpret it that way, because he cannot go too, as he is at present very deep in the minor prophets, and has fallen out of humor with all the commentaries.”

“I am so glad!” said Bessie, placidly “so glad, I mean, that we need not go:I think every one must find his life-work at home.”

I stared a little at this, because I knew that only a few months before Bessie Haines had wanted very much to find style and fashion abroad; but I remembered the Sunday-school, and tried to be as serious and convinced as I could; and to that end I talked a good deal of church interests, and the prophecies, and Light in Obscurity, a new work which had utterly confused me at the first chapter, but which I had read through to Uncle Pennyman one warm July day when he stayed at home to keep Tom’s birth-day.

That reminds me:I have not mentioned Tom, but as he was away at college, and Bessie never seemed to like to talk of him I’m sure I can’t see why it is quite natural that he slipped out of my memory.

He was a ward of Uncle Pennyman, who called him his son, and indeed had adopted him formally.

How two such opposite people ever came to love each other as they did, I never can explain.  It was not a natural, commonplace affection:it was a strong, deep, earnest love, as firm in the hearts of both as the life that caused their throbbings.

Tom was wild and full of frolic:  if there is a graver word than gravity, it should be used to describe Uncle Pennyman’s demeanor.  Tom was quick and restless by nature, but his good sense and determination to make a niche for himself in life, and fill it respectably, had toned down his exuberant spirits into active energy; while Uncle Penny man’s naturally slow tendencies had become aggravated by the ponderous character of his pursuits and tastes:all hurry was obnoxious to him, and he firmly believed that haste was another name for sin.Yet the solemn, slow old man loved the busy, merry young one, and neither saw any fault or failing in the other.

There was no earthly relationship between Thomas Gray Pennyman and me, and yet I was always spoken of as his sister by my dear, worrying old uncle.Tom did not seem to like it, and I knew I did not.

People often said to me, “What a splendid brother you have, Miss Pennyman but what a pity that all these handsome brothers have to be given up to stronger ties!”

How utterly silly!I never had any patience with such nonsense.

There was not much comfort in talking to Bessie about him.I’m sure I do not know why, but I suppose she saw that I avoided the subject; so I was really quite surprised when she said to me, laughing and looking a little mischievous

“Mr. Tom is to join us by and by, your uncle says.I hope we may be able to make it pleasant for him.I believe he likes Mrs. Tanner:he used to like her buns when he was a boy, and I hope he has not forgotten the fancy.”

Tom coming to visit the Haines!  Such a thing had never happened before, and must mean something now.I began to feel quite uneasy, though I really could not have explained why.

We never had much of my uncle’s or Mr. Haines’ society except in the evening:  they spent the day going about together and worrying texts of Scripture with other good old men, before whom Mr. Haines liked to show off uncle’s Bible knowledge.They took some pious excursions in company, and had a solemnly festive time, I have no doubt, for they always came in looking perfectly satisfied with the result of their day.

It generally took some time to hear the dream and find its proper interpretation.  While it was pending the expounder generally gave out his puzzling verses, and then both pondered a good while before they arrived at their conclusions and made them known.

Both the dream and the text must have been of an unusually difficult nature this time, for a whole week went by without either transpiring; and although Bessie and I watched for some allusions to them in our morning and evening family worship, at which the two good men officiated alternately, yet not a hint could we gain until one night at the end of the week it seemed from Uncle Pennyman’s prayer that the matter in some wise referred to Bessie, since Divine guidance was sought under many rhetorical forms for the welfare, future and temporal, of “the young handmaiden, the daughter of thy servant, who would fain know thy will concerning her.”

“Bessie,” said I that night, when we got up stairs, “I think I have found out what your father’s last dream was:  I solemnly believe that he means to send you out as a missionary.”

Now I thought I had said something calculated to make Bessie turn pale and gasp, but I could scarcely believe it when I looked up, expecting to find her almost fainting, and saw her pensively, but by no means alarmedly, shaking her head.

“I am not devoted enough, Winnie, love,” she remarked.“I have not the grand self-abnegating spirit necessary for such a work.  No; mine is a home field.”

If I had not known about the young warriors of Canon lane, I should have thought her demented:as it was, I could scarcely wait for the next day, which was Sunday, to be introduced to the scene which had already produced such a marked change in her character and tastes.

It transpired during breakfast that Uncle Pennyman’s peace had been disturbed by a verse in the book of Nahum, that talked about the lions and lionesses, and their whelps and prey, in what appeared to him a mysterious manner.Mr. Haines, who was a dear, good man, elaborated it so that we all felt as if we had made a visit to the Zoological Gardens, and afterward been carried into Babylonish captivity.My uncle followed his words with a brightening face, and when they grew particularly mixed and long-syllabled, he would exclaim softly,

“It is a great gift! a great gift!” and seem really overcome with the magnitude of his friend’s powers.

I never saw any harm in Uncle Pennyman’s texts:they never worried any one but himself; though I must confess that verse about Ephraim being a cake not turned affected us a little.But that was because he had the ague, and Mr. Haines was attending some kind of convention; and what with the chills, and that unexplained cake of Ephraim’s, we were kept a little uncomfortable for a time.

But Mr. Haines’ visions were perplexing:no one could tell where their signification might point; and this sending for Tom (of course he would never have thought of coming if he had not been sent for) made me quite uneasy.

I began to fear that this would be the first time I had ever gone to see Bessie without enjoying the visit; and as we walked along to Canon Lane Chapel together, her manner was so absent and fluttered that I really did not know what to do.

“It is a delightful and meritorious thing to be pious, no doubt,” I said to myself, “but it has not improved the manner of my dear Bessie:on the contrary, I should say it has entirely shaken her nerves, and given her palpitation of the heart.”

When we reached the chapel we found quite a number and variety of youths already collected around the door, and when we went into a large and airy room, well lighted and filled with seats, a goodly selection awaited us there.

A lady stood on a small platform with a bell in her hand:she had a large, bony figure, and a long, bony face, and turned her eyes toward us without changing their expression into any beam of recognition, as she used her voice without any softening tone or tender cadence whatever: 

“Miss Haines, good-afternoon.  Mary Bryan, where’s your brother?John Mott, you have dropped your tract.Miss Pennyman, glad to see you.Sarah Harper, give your sister a seat.”

Bessie had pushed me on her attention between the monotonous sentences she jerked out at her scholars, and she gave me five words just like the rest, and dropped me off again.

Bessie seemed to become calmer after she had looked around the room once in a hasty, fluttered way, and placing a chair for me, she threw herself energetically into her philanthropic work.

I never knew before what a serious thing it was to be a Sunday-school teacher, or how varied the requirements for such duty were.Thirst seemed to be a prevailing agony among the scholars, and it seized its victims as an epidemic does without warning.They would just reach their seats and drop into them listlessly, or gain them by energetic contest with some previous intruder, and after an empty stare around them would be taken with a sudden pang, expressed in writhing, shaking the right hand wildly and gasping, “Teacher, I want a drink!  I want a drink!”

Then they were subject to a terrible vacillation on the subject of their hats:they would almost consign them to the care of a monitor appointed to hang them on the pegs made and provided, when a sense of their preciousness would suddenly present itself to their minds, and they would rescue them wildly, and throw themselves on the defensive while they sat upon or otherwise protected the contested article of dress.

There were six windows with broad sills in the room, and every child seemed beset with a passionate desire to leave its seat and lodge itself in a surreptitious manner on one of these perches, as if they had been posts of honor.

Whether bits of bright tin, glass bottle-stoppers, ends of twine, broken sticks and marbles were accessions to biblical instruction, or were only so considered by the pupils themselves, did not transpire, but poor Bessie seemed to find them stumbling-blocks in her path, and Miss Pepper had no sooner confiscated one lot than another appeared in circulation and broke the story of Joseph’s coat into a parenthetical narrative: 

“Israel loved Joseph so much that as a particular proof of his parental regard (James Moore, stop putting that stick in your brother’s eye) he prepared a variegated garment known as a ‘coat of many colors.’ (John Mink, take that marble out of your throat, or you’ll swallow it.) The bestowal of this beautiful gift (Mary Dunn, put your ticket away, and, Sally Harris, let her hair alone) awakened feelings akin to envy and bitterness in (Jane Sloper must not borrow her cousin’s bonnet in Sunday-school) the bosoms of his perverted brethren. (Hugh Fraley will leave those strings at home, and, William Grove, stop climbing over the bench.) Alas! what sorrow can evil and disobedient sons, too little conscious (Dicky Taylor, bring that insect to me) of the sacrifices and prayerful struggles of their venerable parents (no, Henry, not another drink), call down upon their already care-burdened minds!”

Of course I felt sure that Miss Pepper was in earnest and meant to do good, but I suspected that she had not what my uncle called “a gift” with children, and I saw how much harder it made it for Bessie, who really was a natural teacher, and who contrived to rule with a steady but gracious firmness, and to win with a sweet simplicity that explained itself to the minds of little ones.

I wondered not a little at her infatuation on the Pepper question when I saw how contrary their ways and influence were.There were plenty of nice, interesting little girls among the two hundred, and some very well-behaved boys too; but Bessie set herself to win the unruly, and it was a lesson to thoughtless me to see her do it.One terrible little soul, with a thin, wiry body and tight-cropped head, fell into a conflict with a square-set, hard-faced boy, and they rolled under the seats together just as Miss Pepper had succeeded in raising the ill-used Joseph out of the pit with words of three syllables.  Bessie went to the rescue, and separated and inverted the combatants, only the soles of whose boots had been visible a moment before.She sat down with them, and although I could not hear her words, I saw that they were slowly smoothing the angry creases of both the thin and the square face.

“Then let him stop a-callin’ me ‘Skinny,’” was the last outbreak of the injured lean one, and his antagonist confessed

“I won’t say nothin’ to you no more if you stop grinning ‘Flathead’ at me.”

Before Miss Pepper had succeeded in describing the paraphernalia of Eastern travel and the approach of the Ishmaelites, the two were induced to shake hands silently across their gentle mediatrix, whose face suddenly grew radiant with the sweetest blush I ever saw as the door opened and a new feature was added to the scene.

I do not mean to detract from the good impulses or high motives of my dear girl when I say that this was the key that opened the subject to me, and made it bright and plain.It wore the form of a truly good and good-looking young gentleman, who had just enough of the clergyman in his appearance to show that he honored his holy calling above all things.He gave Bessie a glance that set my heart at rest for I naturally felt anxious that the blush and brightness and other signs should not be thrown away on an unappreciative object and then he went right into his work.Oh dear! what a difference!One could not imagine, without seeing for one’s self, what a beautiful sympathy could do with material that a hard, dry purpose could only irritate.Of course he bowed to me, and met Miss Pepper like an old friend, and then he began, and in beginning caught every single wandering mind, and held it with that mysterious fascination which individualizes, and convinces each one that he is the particular soul addressed.

He had been spending the hour of his absence from us in the chamber of a little fellow, one of our number, who had been terribly hurt by the machinery of a factory in which he worked.He took every one of us there with him, awakening our liveliest interest, and making us anxious to be helpful to every suffering fellow-creature.Some of us had to cry a little at the kind remembrances the poor crushed child sent us, and we felt quite self-reproachful that we had not thought more of him, and been quieter and more orderly in every way.Then, without any dry, hard preaching, he planted that lesson, left it to take root without digging it up again with personal exhortation, and told us something else.Surely no one could have better divined just what we wanted to know, and just how we would have liked it related.  Love first of all; then cheerfulness, simplicity, and a strong, earnest enthusiasm that made attention compulsory and the attraction irresistible.

I do not believe I ever felt better satisfied in my life than when he closed and the orderly dismission began:then he turned to Bessie, and I saw that my friend had found the mission of heart-and soul-work, and was being drawn heavenward by the hand she loved.Such a timid tenderness as pervaded his every look and word! such a sweet consciousness as lighted hers!I laughed at my folly about Tom, and felt that I should be delighted to see him at Haines’, and introduce him to the dear, good clergyman whom Bessie had the good sense to appreciate.

The Rev. Charles Pepper was the nephew of Miss Mary.I soon changed my prejudiced opinion of that lady into a clearer view of her merits.  She was the Paul that planted:being a woman of wealth and strong religious bias, she had built the mission chapel, gathered together the children and taught them, while her good nephew added the superintendence of the school to his church duties in a different quarter.

“Bessie, does your father know ?” I began as we went homeward together.

She interrupted me:“About Miss Pepper?Oh yes, indeed!She called to ask his permission for me to teach them, and has been at our house twice since.

“You know I don’t mean her at all,” I said, laughing.“I mean her nephew, Bessie Haines.”

But Bessie faltered:she had not the courage to speak freely, since it was evident they had not spoken so to each other yet.She knew she loved and was beloved, but could not force the delicate secret into words, since it was yet unavowed between them.

“All I am afraid of, Bess,” said I, determined to make her practical, for she was as ethereal as if she and her love meant to live in the clouds all their days “all I am afraid of is, that your father’s vision may threaten your peace; for, rely on it, Bess, it is about you and you alone, or why should uncle keep praying for you as a ‘young damsel,’ and ‘handmaiden,’ and ‘female pilgrim,’ and all that?”

Bessie seemed troubled, but she could not be brought to confidence until the minister had opened his heart to her.I saw that, and though I had never had a warning dream in my life, I felt it was my mission to help her.

The Rev. Charles and I had had a little, a very little, talk, but I saw that Bessie had named me to him that pleased me; that he was very desirous of gaining my good-will that pleased me too.So I had happened to say that I admired church architecture, particularly Gothic:some one had said that his church belonged to that style, and he immediately, offered to take us to examine it.I asked him to call for us next day, and he delightedly promised that he would.

I told Bessie, and the ungrateful creature was alarmed and nervous, and gave way to all sorts of nonsense; but I consoled her and admired him in a way that seemed to give her satisfaction.  The next morning I made a startling discovery.  I went into the little bookroom that opened out of the great old-fashioned back parlor, where uncle and Mr. Haines sat every morning with Scott and Clarke and Cruden open before them:I went in very quietly, and didn’t make much noise when there.Mr. Haines was talking in a slow, set way, and I could hear the scratching of a pen over stiff paper.

“Would you mention my reasons for recording this, my dear Daniel?” he said to Uncle Pennyman.

“I have set them down at the commencement,” said my uncle, who was acting as scribe.“I have said that, your mind being clear and your feelings at ease, you retired to your couch on the night of the 28th of October; that the form of your dear wife seemed waiting for you, since you became conscious of her presence immediately after your sinking asleep; and so on.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Haines, witty a deep sigh:“it is a great thing, no doubt, to be so guided in the visions of the night, and I have many times considered myself greatly favored by the knowledge of the ministry of my dear wife’s blessed spirit; but, friend Daniel, if she had been a little more explicit in this instance it would have been a great comfort to me.Follow me now, friend Daniel.You have got it down to where she spoke.  Well, she raised her hand and seemed to point to the couch of Dorcas Elizabeth” (that was what Bess had been baptized, and was called by her father on solemn occasions) “my thoughts had been dwelling on the child, and her increasing age and future duties and she said, ’Marry her wisely to Thomas,’ and repeated the words three times.”

I heard the scratching pen and Mr. Haines’ depressed, uncertain sigh, and my own heart sank heavily.There was no Thomas to marry her to but our Tom, and such a thing was simply preposterous and wicked.I could not, I would not, bear even to think of it.

Oh, good Mrs. Haines, departed so long ago! why should you come back troubling us about such, things? and, above all, why could you not as well have said Charles as Thomas?

“I have that set down,” said Uncle Pennyman.Mr. Haines sighed again in that anxious, uncertain way of his: 

“During the first day after the visitation, Daniel, I could not recall whether my wife’s appearance said, ‘To Thomas, marry her wisely,’ or as we now put it down; but since you have set it clearly before me, and your son will so soon be here, I feel that I am justified in having it stated in that way, and that Providence is guiding me.”

Oh how my heart rose against Uncle Pennyman as I listened!He was the one to blame for such a shameful, foolish notion stealing into Mr. Haines’ head!Left to himself, any name would have suited him equally well, and here was Tom’s thrust in without any earthly reason.It was really dreadful!I could scarcely stand on my feet when I remembered how Tom loved his adopted father, and with what unselfish devotion he always spoke of him.  “If he’s told that it will be a family blessing, he never will have the heart to deny them and grieve Uncle Pennyman.Poor Tom! he is so shockingly unselfish himself that he would rather enjoy a sacrifice than otherwise, I suppose.”  So ran my thoughts, and I grew desperate.Desperation awakens courage.Tom would be there in the evening, and if anything could be done it had to be done at once.

I slipped out silently as I came:  no one heard me.I did not mean that they should do so, for, to confess the truth, I was listening on purpose.I dressed to go out with Mr. Pepper; so did Bessie, though I must say she was very nervous and uncertain about it.“You know papa does not know him in in the character of a friend of mine,” she said, hesitatingly.“Miss Pepper introduced him, and that is all.”

“But that is no reason why it should be all,” I said to myself, and paid no attention to her little bashful fussiness.

When he arrived, I saw in his eyes that he meant to take advantage of the opportunity I was making for him, and so I boldly carried out my plan.We started, and had gone a block or two when I discovered that they were becoming unaware of my existence and completely absorbed in each other.  “Poor dears!” I thought, “let them have a still better chance.”So I stopped in the most natural way possible at a window where trimmings were displayed, and began to stare at some ribbon.“The very shade!” I said:  “I would not miss it for anything.Pray go on slowly, and I’ll join you presently.  Keep on till you reach the church I know the way.And be sure you stay till I come.  No, you shall not come in:I insist that you go right on, and do not bother.I have a sort of pride in making bargains, and they never can be made in company, you know.”I laughed and wouldn’t listen to their waiting, and managed it so well that they went away as unsuspecting and tender as two lambs.  I waited till they were out of sight, and then I started straight for home.

I was in high glee till Mrs. Tanner came up stairs.

“There are great preparations making for Mr. Tom,” said she with a portentous face.“Mr. Haines has given more orders about his reception than I ever knew him to issue before; and, what seems strange, he actually insists on my calling him Mr. Thomas, when I never can get my tongue round anything but Mr. Tom, in the world.”

Both seemed threatening the preparations and the name; and when Mrs. Tanner asked where Miss Bessie was, and heard that she had gone out, she shook her head and said that she was afraid her pa wouldn’t like it.This convinced me that she too had guessed the nature of the vision, and made me more than ever anxious to save poor Bessie and Tom from mutual unhappiness.The first effort was made, and I must consider the next step.  I felt nearly sure that by this time the two dear Sunday-school workers had become personal in their conversation, and taking up my position on the broad sofa in the quiet, shady back parlor, I set myself to thinking out the plan.It was a great, solidly-furnished old room, staid and handsome like the rest of the house, and meant for comfort in every particular.  Over the mantelpiece, and directly opposite to me, was a life-size picture of Mrs. Haines, a very young lady with a mild shyness of expression and a great deal of flaxen hair.She had died when Bessie was a baby, and was altogether a more childlike and undecided person than her daughter.The wonder therefore was that she should have become so dictatorial in the visions of the night, and undertaken to control the family affairs after so many years, never having meddled with them while there was a living opportunity.

I was just thinking how useless it would be to appeal to Uncle Pennyman without without saying something about Tom (and that under the circumstances could not be thought of:it made me burn all over merely to have it in my mind for a moment), when I became drowsy, and had not time to question the feeling until I was sound asleep.

A murmur of voices roused me, or perhaps I was going to wake at any rate, for they were singularly low, and the speakers quite unconscious of my presence.  I looked up, and in the faint light coming between the bowed shutters and lace curtains I saw the Rev. Charles and Bessie directly under the portrait of Mrs. Haines.He had thrown his arm around her, and, although she struggled just a little in the embrace, held her to his heart.

“Oh, I cannot believe it,” she was saying:“it is like a dream.  And Winnie too! to forget all about dear Winnie just because I am so happy.It is selfish and unkind, dear, I am afraid.”

He told her I was too good, too lovable to quarrel with their bliss, and held her to his heart while he looked up to the flaxed-haired, baby-faced mother for a blessing with quite a glow of feeling on his face and real tears in his eyes.

There was something in mine I suppose, for when I looked too I could scarcely believe them:  the portrait seemed to show a different face entirely.  The blue eyes bent down on those upturned to meet them with a look I had never beheld in them before, and the delicate little pink mouth seemed to tremble with a blessing.

“Am I dreaming?” I almost asked it aloud, and the question and the sound of Uncle Pennyman’s voice in the book-room gave me a new idea.Softly I slipped from my place and out at the open door, leaving the absorbed ones to themselves, and joined my uncle and Mr. Haines where they were preparing for another conflict with the commentators.

“I have had a dream,” I said solemnly.

“A dream!” repeated they.

“Yes, and it was so lifelike that I must tell it to you, for I am convinced it is no common warning, but one full of meaning and truth.”

They gazed at me blankly, and I went on, fearing to stop an instant lest I should lose my courage: 

“I was lying on the sofa opposite Mrs. Haines’ portrait ”

“The very place where I lay when last I dreamed,” murmured her husband.

“And I saw Bessie and a gentleman hand in hand beneath it, looking up into the sweet face for a blessing; and oh such a heavenly smile lighted it while the beautiful lips seemed to murmur, ’She will marry wisely, dear Thomas!’”

Mr. Haines was so shaken by my words that my heart misgave me.He covered his face with his hands.“She used to call me dear Thomas,” he said, and the tears ran through his fingers.

“Then the name was yours” said Uncle Pennyman with weighty consideration.  “You remember I said it was capable of a double application:those things are wonderful, and interpret each other.Winnie, my dear girl, could you distinguish this person’s face?”

Before I could answer, Mrs. Tanner at the door said, “Here’s Mr. Tom, bless his heart!I never can learn to call him anything else.”

Tom was so glad to see me!  Yes, I may as well tell it, for it told itself:  dear Tom never seemed so glad before.

“Was it his face, Winnie?” whispered Mr. Haines.

If ever No was said with energy and decision, it was in my reply.The parlor door opened just as we were about to go in all together, shaking hands and making kind speeches over Tom, and Bessie and the Rev. Charles appeared in the act of taking leave of each other.

“That’s the face!” I cried dramatically; and then I really and truly did faint stone dead, as Mrs. Tanner said afterward for I was not used to telling lies, and even white ones were exciting things to tell, and scarcely justified themselves to my conscience by the magnitude of the good they were to do.

When I came to myself, Bessie was hanging over me with all the love she had left from Mr. Charles, I suppose; and I heard Mr. Haines and Uncle Pennyman talking with Tom, and trying to explain to him the remarkable nature of the vision that had overcome me.I sat up, and tried to laugh and declare that it was nothing at all, though my heart kept throbbing.

“You have all had dreams,” said Tom:“you have yet to hear mine.  Uncle, I dreamed that Winnie and I loved each other, and that I asked you for her and you said yes.”

“No, Thomas,” said Uncle Pennyman gravely, but with a kind of breaking about his mouth:“your eyes were open when you had that vision, and you must not jest with serious subjects.But it is well you mentioned it, dear boy, and it is well our child Winnie received such a remarkable direction, since it throws light on friend Haines’ visitation, and apparently the happiness of that excellent young minister and our dear Bessie here.”

“The young man has just expressed himself in corroboration of the vision,” said Mr. Haines, much affected.

Bessie threw her arms round her father, then round me, and then she ran away.Mr. Haines and Uncle Pennyman went out to their commentaries, Mrs. Tanner to see to her buns:Tom and I were alone.

“What is this about, Winnie darling?” he said.

“Tom,” said I, “we are all the victims of dreams.”

MARGARET HOSMER.