“I was lying in the big, carved, four-post family bedstead in my bedroom,” Ruth informed him. “I was half asleep and half awake and I saw myself coming up the steps into the house just as I did when I arrived. As I came, the house door opened, quickly, from within, and four people rushed towards me, with open arms. One was my father.—He clasped me tenderly and said: 'Welcome, welcome home!'... Behind him, a tall, large, old man clasped me in his arms and he cried: 'Welcome, welcome home!' Then came another and with the same words bade me welcome; I felt very happy, and so glad that I had come! But running down the stairs of the house arrived a tiny, meagre, old lady, whose corkscrew curls bobbed at either side her face. She cried: 'Welcome, welcome!' in a shrill, high voice, seizing me in her embrace. 'Welcome!' she cried again, 'but look out!—We can bite!' And as she said it her two sharp white teeth went through my lips till I screamed with pain and started up—all a-tremble—and then I fell back onto the bed and shook for an hour.”
“My sweet child!” the sane amused voice of Pontycroft made reply. “These old four-post family bedsteads are dangerous affairs to sleep in. Quant-à-moi, I've always avoided 'em.... I'll have nothing whatever to do with them. If my great-aunt, from whom I inherited Pontycroft, had not been of my way o' thinking I should have sold those at Pontycroft to the old furniture dealer in the village. Fortunately, that fearless lady lifted the obloquy of the act from my shoulders by disposing of them herself. One day, while my uncle, her husband, scoured the high seas under Nelson, she got rid of all the old family four-posters. When he returned from the war and asked what had become of 'em she acknowledged she'd discovered a preference for bronze beds and had sent to France for a dozen. But he was far too thankful to be at home again. 'Peace now, at any price,' said he. And he never mentioned four-posters to his lady-wife again, but slept and snored contentedly, for forty odd years, in a red-gold, steel enamelled affair, free of family traditions. You'd better follow my aunt's example, Ruth. Send to Boston for a nice new white enamelled bedstead with a nice new wire mattress and let no more family ghosts worry your ingenuous small head.”
“But, what did it mean? After all, it happened, or I'm mad,” Ruth laughing, heard herself insist.
“Oh,” said Pontycroft,—he gave her one of his droll glances—“if you want your midnight vision interpreted you must ask some older sage, even, than I, to do it. I should say, were it not too obvious to be true, that apple pie with an under crust....”
“Nonsense,” interrupted Ruth.
“The sort invented by your French ancestress, Priscilla Mulline Alden (I've heard she was a rare cordon bleu)” went on Pontycroft, unperturbed, “together with New England brown bread—but—that's all too obvious to be true... what are you laughing at?” he queried, artlessly.
“I'm laughing at the Brown Bread,” retorted Ruth, and she laughed aloud, “there wasn't any.”
“There should have been,” said Ponty, with a deprecating lift of the eyebrows. “It's de rigueur with baked beans.”
“But your little story,” he continued, lighting his cigarette, “belongs probably to those mysterious reflex actions of ancestry acting on a sensitive nervous organisation. You can't expect me to explain them. See, though, that you do look out. Don't, manifestly, offend your ancestors and they won't offend you, and there's my interpretation.”
Again Ruth laughed aloud, gleefully, at the tones of Ponty's voice and again a little thrill of pain and hope pierced her breast. She looked at her watch. It was almost noon and she turned towards home through the glade, by the path along the brook.