“Touching Jan-an?” Noreen suggested sleepily.
“Jan-an, of course. Making her beautiful and laughing. Waking her from her sad dream, poor Jan-an, and giving her strength to do really splendid things.”
“I love the wild wind!” Noreen pressed closer. “I’m not afraid of it. And it found Aunt Polly and Uncle Peter?”
“To be sure. It made Aunt Polly seem as grand and big as she really is––only blind folks cannot see––and it made all the blind folks see her for a minute. And it made Uncle Peter––no; it left Uncle Peter as he is!”
“I like that”––drowsily––“and it made us see the man that went to the inn?” Noreen lifted her head, suddenly alert.
“What made you think of him, Noreen?” Mary-Clare stopped swaying to and fro.
“I don’t know, Motherly. Only it was funny how he just came and then the haunt-wind came and Jan-an says she thinks he isn’t. Really we only think we see him.”
“Well, perhaps that’s true, childie. He’s something good, I hope. Now shut your eyes like a dearie, and Mother will rock and sing.”
Mary-Clare fixed her eyes on her child’s face, but she was seeing another. The face of a man whose glance had held hers for a strange moment. She had been conscious, since, of this man’s presence; his name was familiar––she could not forget him, though there was no reason for her to remember him except that he was new; a something different in her dull days.