Some golden, unaccustomed sleep had fallen over the old lady. Stray shreds of darkness loosened from the general mass and floated off, yet did not melt entirely from sight. She was shedding some of her evil thoughts.
'The Sweep!' thought Mother, and turning, found him beside her in the room. Her husband, to her astonishment, was also there.
'But I didn't think of you!' she exclaimed.
'Not a definite thought,' he answered, 'but you needed me. I felt it. We're so close together now that we're practically one, you see.' He trailed his Pattern behind him, clothed now with all manner of rich new colouring, 'I've collected such heaps of new ideas,' he went on, 'and now I want her too. She's in the Story. I'll transfigure her as well.' He was bright as paint, and happy as a sand-boy. 'Well done, old Mother,' he added, 'you've done a lot already. See, she's dreaming small, soft, tender things of beauty that your efforts have let through.'
He glided across and poured from his own store of sympathy into that dry, atrophied soul upon the bed. 'It's a question how much she will be able to transmit, though,' he said doubtfully. 'The spiritual machinery is so stiff and out of gear from long disuse. In Miss Waghorn's case it's only physical—I've just been there—but this is spiritual blackness. We shall see to-morrow. Something will get through at any rate, and we must do this every night, you know.'
'Rather!' echoed Mother.
'Her actual self, you see, has dwindled so that one can hardly find it. It's smaller than a flea, and as hard and black.' They smiled a little sadly.
The Sweep, rushing out of the window with his heavy sack loaded to the brim, interrupted their low laughter. He was no talker, but a man of action. Busily all this time he had been gathering up the loose, stray fragments that floated off from the cloud, and stuffing them into the sack. He now flew, singing, into the night, and they barely caught the last words of his eternal song:—
'… a tremendously busy Sweep, Tossing the blacks in the Rubbish Heap Over the edge of the world.'
'Come,' whispered Daddy. 'It's getting late. The interfering sun is on the way, and you've been hours here already. All the trains are back, and every one is waiting for us.' Yet it had seemed so short a time really.