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"He looked just the same as he has when I've seen him before in the other dreams, you know. The very image of his mother. Isn't it wonderful, Hosy!" "Yes; but don't resurrect the family skeletons, Hephzy. Mr. Campbell isn't interested in anatomy." "Skeletons! I don't know what you're talkin' about. He wasn't a skeleton. I saw him just as plain!
And," with a sudden burst of hope, "as you say, she may not be aware of his attachment. The boy is young. He may forget." "Yes," said I, with a sigh. "He IS young, and he may forget." After he had gone Hephzy turned to me. "If I hadn't understood that old man's feelin's," she declared, "I'd have given him one talkin' to.
At luncheon next day our invalid, a real invalid no longer, joined us at table in the pleasant dining-room, the broad window of which opened upon the formal garden with the sundial in the center. She was in good spirits, and, as Hephzy confided to me afterward, was "gettin' a real nice appetite."
Hephzy was impressed, in her own way, by the uniforms of the "Cold Streams." "There!" she exclaimed, "I've seen 'em walk. Now I feel better. When they stood there, with those red jackets and with the fur hats on their heads, I couldn't make myself believe they hadn't been taken out of a box for children to play with.
Hephzy took charge of the household and was, in a way, quite in her element; in another way she was distinctly out of it. "I did think I was gettin' used to bein' waited on, Hosy," she confided, "but it looks as if I'll have to begin all over again. Managin' one hired girl like Susanna was a job and I tell you I thought managin' three, same as we've got here, would be a staggerer. But it isn't.
Silence for what seemed a long, long time. Then the door opened again and Hephzy appeared. Her cheeks were wet with tears. She put her arms about my neck. "Oh, Hosy," she whispered, "she's real sick. And and Oh, Hosy, how COULD you see her and not see! She's the very image of Ardelia. The very image! Come." I followed her into the room.
I don't seem to remember what I did call him or just how he looked except that he looked like Ardelia. And the next afternoon she and Strickland went away to Boston, he told us." From that trip they never returned. Morley's influence over his wife must have been greater even than any of us thought to induce her to desert her father and Hephzy without even a written word of explanation or farewell.
Hephzy was indignant. "Well!" she exclaimed, as we emerged upon the Strand. "Well! I must say! What sort of folks does he think we are, I'd like to know. Divorce case! I'd be ashamed to hear one. And that old man bein' so wicked and ridiculous for twenty-five cents!
I know I tried. And I was still trying when the sound of steps and voices on the other side of the shrubbery caused us or caused her; I doubt if I should have heard anything except her voice just then to start and exclaim: "Someone is coming! Don't, dear, don't! Someone is coming." It was the Crippses who were coming, of course. Mr. and Mrs. Cripps and Hephzy.
And I'll use your face as a testimonial: 'Kent Knowles, Quahaug. Before and After Taking. Man, you look ten years younger than you did when you went away." "You must not take all the credit," I told him. "You forget Hephzy and her dreams, the dream she told us about that day at Bayport. That dream has come true; do you realize it?" He nodded. "I admit it," he said.
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