“There are great preparations making for Mr. Tom,” said she with a portentous face.  “Mr. Haines has given more orders about his reception than I ever knew him to issue before; and, what seems strange, he actually insists on my calling him Mr. Thomas, when I never can get my tongue round anything but Mr. Tom, in the world.”

Both seemed threatening—­the preparations and the name; and when Mrs. Tanner asked where Miss Bessie was, and heard that she had gone out, she shook her head and said that she was afraid her pa wouldn’t like it.  This convinced me that she too had guessed the nature of the vision, and made me more than ever anxious to save poor Bessie and Tom from mutual unhappiness.  The first effort was made, and I must consider the next step.  I felt nearly sure that by this time the two dear Sunday-school workers had become personal in their conversation, and taking up my position on the broad sofa in the quiet, shady back parlor, I set myself to thinking out the plan.  It was a great, solidly-furnished old room, staid and handsome like the rest of the house, and meant for comfort in every particular.  Over the mantelpiece, and directly opposite to me, was a life-size picture of Mrs. Haines, a very young lady with a mild shyness of expression and a great deal of flaxen hair.  She had died when Bessie was a baby, and was altogether a more childlike and undecided person than her daughter.  The wonder therefore was that she should have become so dictatorial in the visions of the night, and undertaken to control the family affairs after so many years, never having meddled with them while there was a living opportunity.

I was just thinking how useless it would be to appeal to Uncle Pennyman without—­without saying something about Tom (and that under the circumstances could not be thought of:  it made me burn all over merely to have it in my mind for a moment), when I became drowsy, and had not time to question the feeling until I was sound asleep.

A murmur of voices roused me, or perhaps I was going to wake at any rate, for they were singularly low, and the speakers quite unconscious of my presence.  I looked up, and in the faint light coming between the bowed shutters and lace curtains I saw the Rev. Charles and Bessie directly under the portrait of Mrs. Haines.  He had thrown his arm around her, and, although she struggled just a little in the embrace, held her to his heart.

“Oh, I cannot believe it,” she was saying:  “it is like a dream.  And Winnie too!—­to forget all about dear Winnie just because I am so happy.  It is selfish and unkind, dear, I am afraid.”

He told her I was too good, too lovable to quarrel with their bliss, and held her to his heart while he looked up to the flaxed-haired, baby-faced mother for a blessing with quite a glow of feeling on his face and real tears in his eyes.

There was something in mine I suppose, for when I looked too I could scarcely believe them:  the portrait seemed to show a different face entirely.  The blue eyes bent down on those upturned to meet them with a look I had never beheld in them before, and the delicate little pink mouth seemed to tremble with a blessing.