‘It’s true,’ gasped Caroline, ‘it is true—the fern-seed does——’
‘It’s not true,’ said Charles stoutly, his eyes on the face.
‘Oh, but it is,’ said Charlotte. ‘Oh, what’s going to happen now?’
And each child felt that the fern-seed had done what no one had, in the deep heart, believed that it would do, and that their eyes now gazed—seeing—upon the unseen.
‘I wish we hadn’t,’ said Charles. ‘I told you not to.’
The lips of the face outside moved, as though it were speaking.
‘No,’ cried Charlotte. ‘I don’t want it to be true.’
A hand was raised—a hand outside the window. Would it knock at the window? The fern-seed only made you see the unseen, not hear the unheard. If the hand knocked at the window—and plainly it was going to knock,—if the hand knocked, would they hear it?
The hand knocked.