How Miss Verity had managed to drive with her godchild peacefully making a pillow of her arm is a puzzle I cannot explain.
But as Mary slipped off the feather cloak, feeling as warm as a toast, she looked at it rather curiously, for she had her own thoughts about it.
“Shall I keep it in my room, godmother?” she asked. “That is to say, if you mean to lend it me again.”
“You may count it yours as long as you are here,” Miss Verity replied. “I am sure you will take care of it. And—then we shall see.”
“Thank you very much,” said Mary, adding, “I don’t think I should like to take it away with me. It would get dirty in a town, and that would make me unhappy. I have one drawer upstairs with nothing in. I should like to keep it in there.”
“Very well, you may, and Pleasance will give you some nice tissue-paper to cover it with.”
Pleasance did not forget to do so. Mary found two or three large sheets of pale-blue paper lying ready on her bed late that evening, in which she carefully wrapped the mantle.
Perhaps it was because she did this the last thing before going to sleep, that she had strange dreams that night, in which the cloak, and the wood-pigeons, and pretty Blanche and her cousin Michael and her godmother all seemed to be mixed up together, though in the morning she could not distinctly remember anything except that the dreams had been interesting and pleasant.
“I wonder if my Cooies could tell anything about the feather cloak,” she thought, “and oh, I do wonder if the white dove is any relation of theirs, or if they know her.”
And this morning too she jumped out of bed the very moment Pleasance came to call her, so that she might dress quickly and have a minute or two to stand at the window before the bell rang, so that if the wood-pigeons were anywhere near, they could come to talk to her.