But all the curate could now say was, ‘Oh, my head!’
And Jane and Robert felt quite ill with helplessness and hopelessness. A really conscientious curate is a very difficult thing to manage.
And then, just as the hopelessness and the helplessness were getting to be almost more than they could bear, the two children suddenly felt that extraordinary shrinking feeling that you always have when you are just going to vanish. And the next moment they had vanished, and the Reverend Septimus was left alone with his aunts.
‘I knew it was a dream,’ he cried, wildly. ‘I’ve had something like it before. Did you dream it too, Aunt Selina, and you, Aunt Amelia? I dreamed that you did, you know.’
Aunt Selina looked at him and then at Aunt Amelia. Then she said boldly—
‘What do you mean? WE haven’t been dreaming anything. You must have dropped off in your chair.’
The curate heaved a sigh of relief.
‘Oh, if it’s only I,’ he said; ‘if we’d all dreamed it I could never have believed it, never!’
Afterwards Aunt Selina said to the other aunt—
‘Yes, I know it was an untruth, and I shall doubtless be punished for it in due course. But I could see the poor dear fellow’s brain giving way before my very eyes. He couldn’t have stood the strain of three dreams. It WAS odd, wasn’t it? All three of us dreaming the same thing at the same moment. We must never tell dear Seppy. But I shall send an account of it to the Psychical Society, with stars instead of names, you know.’