[CHAPTER XXV.—A DREAM WITH A MEANING.]
Phil had a dream which had a great effect on him. There were several reasons for this. In the first place, it wanted but two days to the great 5th of May; in the second place, he was feeling really ill, so was making greater efforts than usual to conceal all trace of languor or weariness; in the third place, Rachel came to him about half an hour before he went upstairs to bed and burst out crying, and told him she knew something was going to happen. Rachel was not a child who was particularly given to tears, but when she did cry she cried stormily. She showed a good deal of excitement of a passionate and over-wrought little heart to Phil now, and when he questioned her and asked her why she was so excited about her birthday, she murmured first something about the lady of the forest and then about her mother, and then, afraid of her own words, she ran away before Phil could question her further. Phil’s own mother, too, seemed to be in a most disturbed and unnatural state. She was always conning a piece of paper and then putting it out of sight, and her eyes had red rims round them, and when Phil questioned her she owned that she had been crying, and felt, as she expressed it, “low.” All these things combined caused Phil to lay his head on his white pillow with a weary sigh and to go off into the land of dreams by no means a perfectly happy little boy.
Once there, however, he was happy enough. In the first place, he was out of his bed and out of the old house, where so many people just now looked anxious and troubled; and, in the second place, he was in a beautiful new forest, his feet treading on velvet grass, his eyes gazing at all those lovely sights in which his little soul delighted. He was in the forest and he was well, quite well; the tiredness and the aching had vanished, the weakness had disappeared; he felt as though wings had been put to his feet, as though no young eagle could feel a keener and grander sense of strength than did he. He was in the forest, and coming to meet him under the shadows of the great trees was a lady—the lady he had searched for so long and hitherto searched for in vain. She came quite naturally and gently up to him, took his little hand, looked into his eyes, and stooping down she touched his fore head with her lips.
“Brave little boy!” she said. “So you have come.”
“Yes,” answered Phil, “and you have come. I have waited for you so long. Have you brought the gift?”
“Beauty of face and of heart. Yes, I bring them both,” answered the lady. “They are yours; take them.”
“My mother,” whispered Phil.
“Your mother shall be cared for, but you and she will soon part. You have done all you could for her—all, even to life itself. You cannot do more. Come with me.”
“Where?” asked Phil.
“Are you not tired of the world? Come with me to Fairyland. Take my hand—come! There you will find perpetual youth and beauty and strength and goodness—come!”