“Betty, you must be mad,” said nurse.
“Maybe you are mad,” retorted Betty, her face flaming, “but I am not. It was a girl quite as poor as me that he took for his spouse; and why shouldn’t there be another like him? That’s what I thought, and when the wedding came to an end I asked Mary Dugdale to give me a bit of the cake all private for myself. She’s a good-natured sort is Mary, though not equal to Jones—not by no means. She cut a nice square of the cake, a beautiful chunk, black with richness as to the fruit part, yellow as to the almond, and white as the driven snow as to the icing. And, if you’ll believe it, there was just the tip of a wing of one of those angelic little doves cut off with the icing. Well, I brought it home with me, and I slept on it just according to the old saw which my mother taught me. Mother used to say, ‘Betty, if you want to dream of your true love, you will take a piece of wedding-cake that belongs to a fresh-made bride, and you will put it into your right-foot stocking, and tie it with your left-foot garter, and put it under your pillow. And when you get into bed, not a mortal word will you utter, or the spell is broke. And that you will do, Betty,’ said my mother, ‘for three nights running. And then you will put the stocking and the garter and the cake away for three nights, and at the end of those nights you will sleep again on it for three nights; and then you will put it away once more for three nights, and you will sleep on it again for three nights. And at the end of the last night, why, the man you dream of is he.’”
“Well, and did you go in for all that gibberish?” asked nurse, with scorn.
She had a duster in her hand, and she vigorously flicked Mr. Dale’s desk as she spoke.
“To be sure I did; and I thought as much over the matter as ought to have got me a decent husband. Well, when the last night come I lay me down to sleep as peaceful as an angel, and I folded my hands and shut my eyes, and wondered what his beautiful name would be, and if he’d be a dook or a marquis. I incline to a dook myself, having, so to speak, fallen in love with the Dook of Mauleverer-Wolverhampton of blessed memory. But what do you think happened? It’s enough to cure a body, that it is.”
“Well, what?” asked nurse.
“I dreamt of no man in the creation except John there. If that isn’t enough to make a body sick, and to cure all their romance once and for ever, my name ain’t Betty Snowden.”
John laughed and turned a dull red at this unexpected ending to Betty’s story.
“Now let’s clean up,” she said; “and don’t twit me any more about my dreams. They were shattered, so to speak, in the moment of victory.”
The children were called in, particularly Briar and Patty, and the room was made quite fresh and sweet, the carpet taken up, the floor scrubbed, a new rug (bought long ago for the auspicious moment) put down, white curtains hung at the windows in place of the dreadful old moreen, every book dusted and put in its place, and the papers piled up in orderly fashion on a wagonette which was moved into the room for the purpose. Finally the children and servants gazed around them with an air of appreciation.