The voice grew articulate. "Oh, my darling, I knew you would come. I want you close, to tell me...."
"Yes, dear!—to tell you what?"
"I want you to tell me whether one of the things is a dream."
"One of which things, dear?" One has to be a hard old stager not to feel his flesh creep at delirium. Gwen had to fight against a shudder.
"There are so many, you know, now that they all come back at once. Tell me, darling, were my little boy and girl real, who came up into my room and played and gave me tea out of small cups? I called them Dave and Dolly. Dolly was very small. Oh, Dolly!" Dolly's size, and her tenderness on one's knee, were, so to speak, audible in the voice that became tender to apostrophise her.
"Dave and Dolly Wardle? Of course they are real! As real as you or me! There they are in Sapps Court, with Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar. And Susan Burr," Then such a nice scheme crossed Gwen's mind.
But old Maisie seemed adrift, not able to be sure of any memory; past and present at war in her mind, either intolerant of the other. "Then tell me, dear," said she. "Is the other real too? Is it not a thing I have dreamed, a thing I have dreamed in the night, here in Widow Thrale's cottage ... where I came in the cart ... where I came from the great house where the sweet old gentleman was, that was your father ... where I could see out over the tree lands ... where my Ruth came to me?..." The affection for her daughter, that had struck root firmly in her heart, remained a solid fact, whether she was thinking of her as before or after the revelation of her identity.
Gwen sat beside her on the bed-edge, her arm round her head on its pillow, her free hand soothing the restless fingers that would not be still. "What is it you think you have dreamed, Mrs. Picture dear?" said she.
"It was all a dream, I think. Just a mad dream—but then—but then—did not my Ruth think I was mad?..."
"But what was it? Tell it to me, now, quietly."