"Yes—well, who put you to bed, dear?"
"Oh, she did—Dick's wife—I don't know what her name was—but she said how she and Dick was my true friends, and she said they was going to take me to such a beautiful house where my papa lived, and brothers and sisters, and lots of beautiful pictures—and I seemed to know——"
Lily stopped, wrinkling her brows with a puzzled expression.
"Go on; what did you seem to know? did you remember about that house?" said John.
He spoke very gently, but he had arrived at that moment in life—some of us have known it—when we realise that something we have cared about very much is lost for ever—really for ever—that no change in this world's circumstances can bring it back again. Yes, this little treasure of his had a home of her own; he quite knew it and believed it. She had returned to him, but only for a short time. He must lose her, and he had already lost Mary.
"Did you remember about that house, Lily?" he repeated.
"No—I don't think so. I seemed to be carried upstairs, and there was the blue lady up on the wall, she looked at me. But it was a little dream."
"Well now, this woman, and this man Dick—what was they like to look at?"
"Oh, ugly!" said the child, shaking her head in disgust. "Her face was all red, and I couldn't bear her to kiss me, I tried to get my face away. Dick had something else to do than to look after little girls, you know. He looked after the horse, and he played the organ—but he seemed awful pleased to see me, and him and her, they both looked at my locket and twisted it about, and they said to be sure it was the same."
"Had Dick got a little bit of a moustache, and a whitish sort of unwholesome-looking face?"