The curtains were drawn, the gas-jets lit, and the supper on the table, nearly finished too.
"Why did you allow me to sleep so long?" asked Minnie in rather an injured tone.
"As to that," replied Archie, "I'd have wakened you fast enough—you know my usual accommodating spirit—but papa would not hear of it."
"And really you did look so uncommonly tired," added Ned, "that we all thought it a charity to let you go on. I hope it was a pleasant dream—you seemed to do a great deal of talking during it."
Minnie laughed, and taking her seat at the table proceeded to entertain them with an account of it, and its absurd termination, which was received with shouts of laughter, and Minnie was glad to observe that her father joined them in their merriment without the appearance of force or strain, which she had noticed on similar occasions during the last few weeks.
"But what put the miners in your head?" He enquired curiously, when they were at last sober again.
"I suppose it must have been with hearing so much about them for some time back, and we were talking about them down in the Hollow this afternoon. I knew you were trying to satisfy them, and I was bothering myself because I could do nothing when things were going wrong."
"Well, if all that was on your mind, I hardly wonder at your dreaming of miners," remarked Mr. Kimberly smiling.
"And highly complimented the miners may think themselves," put in Archie.
"Well, as it turns out," continued Mr. Kimberly, "you needn't have worried yourself quite so much about your inability, seeing you have already accomplished a very great deal—you and your young friends who help you."