“Father, I will tell you. Dreams are nonsense, are they not? Well, at least, this is what I dreamt.
“I was somewhere in a great house; I do not know where it was. It was a house I have never seen. It was one of the old houses, and it was very dark. I was a child, I thought, and I was ... I was afraid of something. The passages were all dark, and I went crying in the dark, looking for a light, and there was none. Then I heard a voice talking, a great way off. Father—-”
Her hand gripped his more tightly, and again her eyes went round the room.
With great difficulty Percy repressed a sigh. Yet he dared not leave her just now. The house was very still; only from outside now and again sounded the clang of the cars, as they sped countrywards again from the congested town, and once the sound of great shouting. He wondered what time it was.
“Had you better tell me now?” he asked, still talking with a patient simplicity. “What time will they be back?”
“Not yet,” she whispered. “Mabel said not till two o’clock. What time is it now, father?”
He pulled out his watch with his disengaged hand.
“It is not yet one,” he said.
“Very well, listen, father.... I was in this house; and I heard that talking; and I ran along the passages, till I saw light below a door; and then I stopped.... Nearer, father.”
Percy was a little awed in spite of himself. Her voice had suddenly dropped to a whisper, and her old eyes seemed to hold him strangely.