“I might not have stayed with him to the last, but for a dream I had that night, in which Anna came to me, her robes all white and pure as are the robes of the redeemed, a halo of glory round her head, and a look of love in her eyes as she bent over me and said:
“‘There’s a little harp in heaven waiting for my boy, and ere many days his baby hands will sweep its golden strings; but till that time arrives, he wants you, Dora Freeman,—wants you to lead him down into the river, across whose waters I shall wait to meet him. For Richard’s sake, you’ll go.’
“The beautiful vision faded from my view, and I awoke from what seemed more reality than a dream.
“‘Not for Richard’s sake,’ I said, ‘but for Anna’s;’ and so next day I went again to where the little sick boy lay, watching and waiting for me.
“‘I don’t call him Papa Richard now,’ he said, when my wrappings were removed, and I sat down beside him. ‘I told him what you said, that he was not my father, and he told me, “No, Robin, I am not,” but he wouldn’t say where papa was. Do you know, lady, is he in heaven, too?’
“I could not tell, and I tried to divert his mind into some other channel, getting him to speak of Richard, and, vain girl that I was, laying ingenious snares for ascertaining if Richard had mentioned me when he was home.
“‘He talked of “Dora.” Is that you, and may I call you so?’ Robin said, in reply to my direct interrogation as to what Richard had talked about; and so after that I was Dora to the child, who would scarcely let another wait upon him. ‘You seem like mother. You’ll stay,’ he kept repeating, when Mattie came at nightfall after me.
“I thought of Anna in my dream; thought of the little golden harp, and stayed, while people talked, as people will, wondering what kept me at that child’s sick-bed, and associating me at last with Richard, for whose sake they said I had turned nurse to Robin. This piece of gossip proved the resurrection of the old story, which was told and retold in a thousand different forms, until madcap Jessie Verner threatened to box the first one’s ears who should say Anna West to her again. This she told me herself, watching with me by Robin, and that was all that passed between us on the subject. It seemed to be tacitly understood that neither Mattie, Bell, nor herself were to speak of the story to me, and they did not. Somehow it would have been a great relief to know just what they thought, but I would not ask, and on this point surrounded myself with so strong a barrier of reserve, that they never tried to break it down.
“Jessie had come to Mrs. West’s unsolicited, and it was strange how the quiet, sad woman opened her heart at once to receive the wild young creature, while Robin turned to her trustingly, and whispered when she was gone:
“‘I don’t mind—her seeing my feet. She laughs at most everything, but she wouldn’t at my poor, twisted toes.’