“Don’t think,” she added hastily, “that I’m displeased or dissatisfied with Felix, because I’m not, though what I’ve said might give that impression. He is a good son and I am proud and glad to be his mother. But a mother has so many dreams about a son when he is little that no boy could possibly fulfill all of them. He must follow his own bent, and the other things she has dreamed for him must be left behind. So I’ll just feel as if, in some mysterious way, those dreams had come alive in you. And—oh, Penelope! Do you remember what I said a little while ago, when we saw Mr. Gordon coming toward us out of the storm, that it was just like someone taking form and shape in a dream? I’ll think of you as my dream son, Mr. Gordon—Hugh!”
Impulsively he seized her hand again and held it closely clasped in both of his. “Will you do that? Will you think of me in that way?”
Penelope, in her wheel chair beside them, fidgeted her weak, misshapen body. Her nerves were tense with an excitement which she knew was not all due merely to an unexpected call from a stranger. Unaccustomed emotions, strong but undefined, were filling her breast and tugging at her heart. To her sharpened perception it seemed almost as if something uncanny were hovering in the room. She shivered and leaned back wearily. What spell was coming over them? Were those two beside her, strangers until an hour ago, about to sink sobbing into each other’s arms? And was she, Penelope, the calm and self-mastered, about to shriek hysterically?
“How ghostly you two are becoming,” she exclaimed, with an effort at vivacity, “with your dreams and your spirits! You make me afraid that Mr. Gordon, substantial as he looks, will melt away into thin air before our very eyes!”
“We are getting wrought up, aren’t we?” Gordon assented as he turned to her. “And you are pale, Penelope! I hope I haven’t tired you too much. Seeing you both, and your being so kind, have meant a lot to me, more than you can guess. And if your mother is going to be my dream mother, Penelope, you’ll be my dream sister, won’t you?”
He smiled as he said this, then all three laughed a little, more to lessen the tension which all of them felt than because they were amused, and presently the two women were alone again. Afterward, as they talked over all the incidents of the afternoon, they recalled that it was the only time during his long call that Gordon had laughed, and they wondered that a young man who seemed so full of vigor and life should have so serious a demeanor.