“Why, Emmy—­Emmy—­my Emmy—­my Emmy—­”

She saw him now and knew him, and tried in her poor and already burningly ashamed way to force her chattering jaws together.

“Hen-ery—­dream—­bad—­fish—­Hen-ery—­”

He drew her up to the side of the bed, covering her shivering knees as she sat there, and throwing a blanket across her shoulders.  Fortunately he was aware that the soothing note in his voice helped, and so he sat down beside her, stroking her hand, stroking, almost as if to hypnotize her into quiet.

“Henry,” she said, closing her fingers into his wrists, “I must have dreamed—­a horrible dream.  Get back to bed, dear.  I—­I don’t know what ails me, waking up like that.  That—­fish!  O God!  Henry, hold me, hold me.”

He did, lulling her with a thousand repetitions of his limited store of endearments, and he could feel the jerk of sobs in her breathing subside and she seemed almost to doze, sitting there with her far hand across her body and up against his cheek.

Then came knocks at the door, and hurried explanations through the slit that he opened, and Mrs. Peopping’s eye close to the crack.

“Everything is all right....  Just a little bad dream the missus had....  All right now....  To be expected, of course....  No, nothing anyone can do....  Good night.  Sorry....  No, thank you.  Everything is all right.”

The remainder of the night the Jetts kept a small light burning, after a while Henry dropping off into exhausted and heavy sleep.  For hours Mrs. Jett lay staring at the small bud of light, no larger than a human eye.  It seemed to stare back at her, warning, Now don’t you go dropping off to sleep and misbehave again.

And holding herself tense against a growing drowsiness, she didn’t—­for fear—­

* * * * *

The morning broke clear, and for Mrs. Jett full of small reassurances.  It was good to hear the clatter of milk deliveries, and the first bar of sunshine came in through the hand-embroidered window curtains like a smile, and she could smile back.  Later she ventured down shamefacedly for the two cups of coffee, which she drank bravely, facing the inevitable potpourri of comment from this one and that one.

“That was a fine scare you gave us last night, Mrs. Jett.”

“I woke up stiff with fright.  Didn’t I, Will?  Gracious!  That first yell was a curdler!”

“Just before Jeanette was born I used to have bad dreams, too, but nothing like that.  My!”

“My mother had a friend whose sister-in-law walked in her sleep right out of a third-story window and was dashed to—­”

“Shh-h-h!”

“It’s natural, Mrs. Jett.  Don’t you worry.”

She really tried not to, and after some subsequent and private reassurance from Mrs. Peopping and Mrs. Keller, went for her hansom ride with a pleasant anticipation of the Park in red leaf, Mrs. Plush, in a brocade cape with ball fringe, sitting erect beside her.