So while his mother was finishing the dishes and calling him to go, he staggered out of his chair, and seeming to be half asleep and half awake stumbled into the front room where the sofa was, and with a groan of fatigue he fell upon its soft old springs and stretched himself out.
He thought he knew what would happen, and sure enough it really did. The kind mother, coming in later found him enjoying such a deep, peaceful sleep that she hadn't the heart to waken the boy and make him go and put his feet into cold water. She shivered a little herself, just to think of it. So she covered him up carefully with a shawl and left him.
A very strange thing happened then. Joe found that he was not lying on the sofa at all, but on a bench in a beautiful garden. Who had such a garden in their neighborhood? He knew he had never seen it before and he gazed about at the nodding lilies and the roses that climbed high on a lattice, just as they did in a picture book he had. There were paths leading about this garden and small blue flowers grew thickly along their edges.
Joe was wonderfully comfortable and happy in the midst of so much beauty, and he lay there looking at the bees seeking for honey in the flower cups, and the butterflies that played together in the air, and alighted on the flowers, sipping the dew, while they opened and closed their golden wings.
Suddenly there came into sight a lovely little girl, strolling along the path toward him. Joe was so surprised and delighted to see her that he sat right up. He remembered her well. She was the girl whom he had seen ride, standing on a milk white horse in the circus a few weeks ago. O that proud horse, with his fine arched neck, and O, the wonderful girl in the white, lacy dress, and the gold star on her forehead! How fearlessly she had smiled. To think that she should be here!
She was smiling now at the flowers as she strolled along, and butterflies circled around that golden star as it gleamed in the sunlight. Her lacy dress blew in the summer breeze, just as it had in her flight on the milk white horse.
Joe sat up and gazed and gazed. He could hardly wait to tell her how glad he was she had come, and ask her if he might ride once on her wonderful horse. He was springing up to go to meet her, when a fairy suddenly appeared from the lily-bell near him. The fairy had wings brighter than the butterflies, and a blue-bell was perched on his saucy head.
At least he seemed saucy to Joe, for he waved him back with the wand in his tiny hand, with as much an air of authority as if he had been six feet tall.
"But I want to speak to her," said Joe, "I want to play with her."
The little girl had come quite near now, and she heard this. Her smiling face grew very sober as she looked at him, and she shook her head.