We had both become tall, womanly girls, but Uncle Pennyman and Mr. Haines called us children, and treated us as such; and Bessie was just writing to me about her father’s telling her she must begin to think of serious things, when my uncle remarked to me that the time was approaching when I should prepare myself to assume the duties and responsibilities of a rational female.  Just as if we had waited to be told this, when in fact Bessie and I had been consulting about our bonnets and dresses in the most grave and mature manner for years past, and arranging our future on plans that for variety and agreeability could not have been surpassed had we been brought up on the Arabian Nights and Moore’s Poems, instead of Baxter’s Saint’s Rest and Pollok’s Course of Time.

“There are several questions of vital importance that have been growing daily stronger in my mind,” said my uncle Pennyman.  “My friend Thomas Haines has a gift in clearing points and expounding meanings; so that I feel it to be for my mind’s edifying and my soul’s profit to go to him for counsel.”

I was delighted to hear this.  I wanted to see Bessie, and I blessed the bond that united these good brothers in Israel and drew us together so often.  Mr. Haines was good at texts, and my uncle was wonderfully expert at dreams.  Mr. Haines was a great dreamer, and my uncle constantly stumbled over passages needing elucidation.  So we lived in harmonious intercourse, and Bessie and I talked of all our plans and delights while they got themselves entangled in obscurities with a commentary under each arm.

It would have appeared, from Mr. Haines’ dreams, that Bessie’s mother had been a most fussy and bothering lady, though I was told by the housekeeper, who knew her well, that she was the mildest and most timid of little wives while living.

According to these visions, she was constantly troubled in her spiritual state on the greatest variety of small subjects; and my expert uncle, in expounding her communications, was always able to draw from them strong religious lessons, and to administer much strengthening comfort to his friend the dreamer.

“I was hoping papa would soon have a vision,” said Bessie when we were settled together all comfortably, and she had told me how glad she was to see me again.  “Mrs. Tanner said last week that she was sure he was going to have another, because the spire which he felt he was directed in his last dream to put on the little chapel was all complete, and the missionary outfit which he had believed himself called upon to provide was ready and gone to the South Seas, and he naturally looked for more work.  When he said last week, ’Bessie, I have sent for Brother Pennyman concerning a visitation in the night,’ I was so glad, for, Winnie dear—­would you believe it?—­I have been dreaming too, and I want you to tell me if I have read my dream aright.”

Now, this was the most wonderful thing that Bessie Haines could have told me—­the most startling and least to be expected altogether; for if ever there was a wide-awake girl, it was she.