Her father was also a coal-master like Minnie's, but his works were in quite a different part of the country so that they were inaccessible to her at present. They had a house there, though, just outside the little mining village, and there they usually removed during the Summer months. Fired by Minnie's example, Bessie had formed the resolution of initiating something of the same kind among her father's work-people when she should be among them again in a few weeks' time at most; accordingly, she was anxious to acquire as much experience as possible in the different sections of the work set on foot by the "Hollowmell Mission," and their varied results.
The case was felt to be hopeless indeed when Bessie gave in, and as nothing further could be done, and no fresh idea was promulgated, the meeting separated with the intention of giving the matter a careful re-consideration in case any solution might present itself hitherto unthought of.
Minnie was in very low spirits indeed, for her father was looking more care-worn and troubled every day, and was even now away attending one of those meetings from which he usually returned only to shut himself up in his study without seeing or speaking to any one.
Mabel was not out that day, she was naturally rather delicate, and had drooped very much of late, indeed, she had not been right since the night of Mrs. Malone's death, and this added a new cause for anxiety to Minnie's already troubled mind.
She walked slowly home trying to think of a way of bringing their plan to a successful issue, and so doing something, at least, towards the diffusion of a better spirit among the people. She could not bear the thought of being idle while there was a vague possibility of the slightest improvement being made in the present aspect of affairs. But her brain seemed willing to turn to anything but that, and she found herself as far off as ever from any settlement by the time she reached home.
Her father had not yet returned, and the boys were out, so she sat down in the window to await their arrival. She had fallen into a sort of dream, and was performing all sorts of impossible feats before an admiring audience, composed for the most part of miners, but among whom she could distinguish the faces of her father, Mabel, Charlie, and a certain Mr. Laurence, the identical good-looking Methodist minister to whom Mona Cameron had on one occasion alluded.
Strangely enough, or rather, not strangely at all, for what impossible thing is not possible in a dream, Mona was her fellow-actor in this vision, and the two were in the midst of some wonderful acrobatic display, when they happened to touch each other and the result was a sudden "phiz," not a moral "phiz," such as the pupils of Miss Marsden's school were in the habit of witnessing, but a real, or rather what seemed to her a real chemical "phiz" in which both were involved, and without much surprise she beheld herself seethe and bubble "just like lemonade," as she afterwards described it, and finally vanish into viewless vapour.
Just at that moment a sharp report in her ear caused her to start and wake, and there, sure enough, was her father in the act of drawing the cork of a lemonade bottle, while Archie poured out the contents of another, which must by some mysterious means or other have got into her dream.
"Well, sleepyhead!" exclaimed Archie, "did you condescend to wake at last? Do you know how long you have been sleeping?"
Minnie looked round in half-awakened surprise.