"The funny part of it was," she said, "that in the dream I wasn't me at all. Not me, as you know me. I thought somehow I was that poet in my picture, the man in the steel engravin' with a look like he see heaven. An' it didn't seem strange to me, but just like it had always been so. I thought I rilly was that poet that I'd looked at in the picture all my life. But then I guess after all that part wasn't so funny as the rest of it. For down at the end o' the road somebody was waitin' for me under trees all in blossom, like the picture, too. It was a girl, standin' there. An' I thought I looked at her—I, the poet, you know—an' I see that the girl was me, Calliope Marsh, lookin' just like I looked every day, natural as anything. Like you see yourself in the glass.
"I know I wasn't su'prised at all. We met like we was friends, both livin' here in the village, an' we walked down the road together like it had always been that way. An' we talked—like you do when you're with them you'd rather be with than anybody else. I thought we was goin' somewhere to see somebody, an' we talked about that:—
"'Will They be home, do you think?' I says.
"An' the girl that was me says: 'Oh, yes. They'll be home. They're always home,' she told me. An' we both felt pleased, like when you're sure.
"An' then—oh," Calliope cried, "I wish I could remember what we said. I wish I could remember. I know it was something that seemed beautiful, an' the words come all soft. It was like bein' born again, somewheres else. An' we knew just exactly what each other meant, an' that was best of all."
She hesitated, seeking to explain that to me.
"When I was twenty," she said, "I use' to want to talk about things that wasn't commonly mentioned here in Friendship—I mean, well, like little things I'd read about noted people an' what they said an' done—an' like that. But when you brought 'em up in the conversation, folks always thought you was tryin' to show off. An' if you quoted a verse o' poetry in company, my land, there was a hush like you'd swore. So gradually I'd got to keepin' still about such things. But in that dream we talked an' talked—said things about old noted folks right out an' told about 'em without beginnin' it 'I happened to read the other day.' An' I know I mentioned the sun on the leaves an' the way the clouds looked, right out, too, without bein' afraid the girl that was me would think I was affected. An' I said little things about—oh, like about goblins in the wood an' figgers in the smoke, without bein' scared that mothers would hear of it an' not let their children come to see me. An' then I made up things an' said—things I was always wantin' to say—like about expectin' to meet Summer walkin' down the road, an' so on: things that if I'd said so's they'd got out around Friendship, folks would 'a' thought I was queer an' not to be trusted to bring up their mail from town. I said all those kind o' things, like I was really born to talk what I thought about. An' the girl that was me understood what I meant. An' we laughed a good deal—oh, how we laughed together. That was 'most the best of all.
"Well, the dream dwindled off, like they will. An' when I woke up, I was nothin' but Calliope Marsh, livin' in Friendship where folks cut a loaf o' bread on a baker's headstone just because he was a baker. Rill life didn't get any better, an' I was more an' more lonesome in Friendship. Somehow, nobody here in town rilly matched me. They all knew what I said well enough, but when I spoke to 'em about what was rill interestin' to me, seemed like their minds didn't click, with that good little feelin' o' rilly takin' it in. My i-dees didn't seem to fit, quite ball an' socket, into nobody's mind, but just to slide along over. And as to their i-dees—I rec'lect thinkin' that the three R's meant to 'em Relations, Recipes, an' the Remains. Yes, all I did have, you might say, was my walks out in the Depot Woods. An' times like when Elder Jacob Sykes—that was Silas's father—said in church that God come down to be Moses's undertaker, I run off there to the woods feelin' all sick an' skinned in soul, an' it sort o' seemed like the gully understood. An' still, you can't be friends when they's only one of you. It's like tryin' to hold a dust-pan an' sweep the dirt in at the same time. It can't be done—not thorough. An' so settin' out there I used to take a book an' hunt up nice little things an' learn different verses, in the hopes that if that dream should come back, I could have 'em to tell—tell 'em, you know, to the girl that was me. Because it hed got so by then that it seemed to me I was actually more that poet than I was Calliope Marsh. An' so it went along till the day I met him—the man, the poet."
"The man!" I said. "But do you mean the man—the poet—the one that was you?"
Calliope nodded confidently.