No!  She was a lone widow with nine children, six of whom were already in the lone churchyard on the hill, and the others lying ill with measles and scarlet fever beside her.  She had just walked many weary miles that day, and had often begged from door to door for a slice of bread for the starving little ones.  It was of no use now—­they would die!  They would never see their dear mother again.  This was a favourite imaginative situation of Polly’s, but only indulged when her companions were asleep, partly because she could not trust confederates with her more serious fancies, and partly because they were at such times passive in her hands.  She glanced timidly round; satisfied that no one could observe her, she softly visited the bedside of each of her companions, and administered from a purely fictitious bottle spoonfuls of invisible medicine.  Physical correction in the form of slight taps, which they always required, and in which Polly was strong, was only withheld now from a sense of their weak condition.  But in vain, they succumbed to the fell disease—­(they always died at this juncture)—­and Polly was left alone.  She thought of the little church where she had once seen a funeral, and remembered the nice smell of the flowers; she dwelt with melancholy satisfaction on the nine little tombstones in the graveyard, each with an inscription, and looked forward with gentle anticipation to the long summer days when, with Lady Mary in her lap, she would sit on those graves clad in the deepest mourning.  The fact that the unhappy victims at times moved as it were uneasily in their graves or snored, did not affect Polly’s imaginative contemplation, nor withhold the tears that gathered in her round eyes.

[Illustration]

Presently the lids of the round eyes began to droop, the landscape beyond began to grow more confused, and sometimes to disappear entirely and reappear again with startling distinctness.  Then a sound of rippling water from the little stream that flowed from the mouth of the tunnel soothed her and seemed to carry her away with it, and then everything was dark.

The next thing she remembered was that she was apparently being carried along on some gliding object to the sound of rippling water.  She was not alone, for her three companions were lying beside her, rather tightly packed and squeezed in the same mysterious vehicle.  Even in the profound darkness that surrounded her, Polly could feel and hear that they were accompanied, and once or twice a faint streak of light from the side of the tunnel showed her gigantic shadows walking slowly on either side of the gliding car.  She felt the little hands of her associates seeking hers, and knew they were awake and conscious, and she returned to each a reassuring pressure from the large protecting instinct of her maternal little heart.  Presently the car glided into an open space of bright light, and stopped.  The transition from the darkness of the tunnel at first dazzled their eyes.  It was like a dream.