Mrs. Harrison said no more, but climbed up the narrow staircase to Joy's room.
"Oh, Goody dear! I am so glad you are come," Joy said, stretching out her little thin arms and winding them round her friend's neck. "I have been fidgeting so, hearing you talking to Uncle Bobo downstairs. And I've been very snappy to Susan, because she will have it I ought to try to stand. Goody dear, I can't."
"Susan knows that as well as I do, dearie. I think she tries to make you out much stronger than you are, to comfort Uncle Bobo."
"Dear Uncle Bobo!" the child said. "I wish he would not fret about me. Goody! I was dreaming of a horse tearing after me, just as that horse did that evening; and then it wasn't a horse at all, but it was great roaring waves, and I thought Jack was with me, and we were going to be drowned."
The lines on Mrs. Harrison's forehead deepened, and she tried to say cheerfully—
"Dreams do not mean anything, dear; and it is said they always go by contrary, you know."
Then Mrs. Harrison began to settle Joy's pillows, and put back the curtains so that she might see from her bed the strip of blue sky above the opposite roofs and through a slight aperture between the two houses, where Joy could on clear nights see two or three stars, and at certain, and what seemed to her very long intervals, the moon, on her lonely way through the heavens.
"Susan says the wedding will be to-morrow, and that you will have to stay to keep shop while Miss Pinckney is away."
"Yes, dear; and Bet is coming to be with you."
Joy sighed, and said softly—