He sat down suddenly, and a deep silence filled the room.
CHAPTER XXVIII. A SHOP IN HEAVEN.
“Uncle,” said Rachel, “may I read your visions of the shops in heaven?”
“Oh no, Rachel. You are not able to read to-night,” said her uncle deprecatingly.
“I think I am, uncle. I should like to try. It will let the gentlemen see what you WOULD think an ideal state of things.—It is something, Mr. Wingfold, my uncle once dictated to me, and I wrote down just as he said it. He can always do better dictating than writing, but this time he was so ill with asthma that he could not talk much faster than I could write; and yet to be so ill I never saw him show so little suffering; his thinking seemed to make him forget it.—Mayn’t I read it, uncle? I know the gentlemen would like to hear it.”
“That we should,” said both men at once.
“I will fetch it you then,” said Polwarth, “if you will tell me where to find it.”
Rachel gave him the needful directions, and presently he brought a few sheets of paper, and handed them to her.
“This is no dream, Mr. Wingfold,” he said. “It is something I thought fairly out before I began to dictate it. But the only fit form I could find for it was that of a vision—like the Vision of Mirza, you know.—Now read, Rachel, and I will hold my tongue.”