an with
the sudden appearance, as she dozed in her chair at Sapps Court, all the
memories of her past world creeping spark-like through its half-burned
scroll, a dream of Gwen in her glory, heralded by Dave; depositing
Dolly, very rough-headed, on the floor, and explaining her intrusion
with some difficulty owing to those children wanting to explain too.
This was dreamlike enough, but it had become more so with the then
inexplicable crash that followed a discomfort in the floor; more so with
that strange half-conscious drive through the London streets in the glow
of the sunset; more so yet, when, after an interval of real dreams, she
woke to the luxury of Sister Nora's temporary arrangements, pending the
organization of the Simple Life; more dreamlike still when she woke
again later, to wonder at the leaves of the creeper that framed her
lattice at the Towers, ruby in the dawn of a cloudless autumn day, and
jewelled with its dew. She had to look, wonderingly, at her old
unchanged hands, to be quite sure she was not in Heaven. Then she caught
a confirmatory glimpse of her old white head in a mirror, and that
settled it. Besides, her old limbs ached; not savagely, but quite
perceptibly, and that was discordant with her idea of Heaven.

Her acquiescence was complete in all that had happened. Not that it was
clearly what she would have chosen, even if she could have foreseen all
its outcomings, and pictured to herself what she would have been
refusing, had refusal been practicable. Her actual choice, putting aside
newly kindled love for this mysterious and beautiful agency, half
daughter and half Guardian Angel, that had been sprung upon her life so
near its close, might easily have been to face the risks of some
half-dried plaster, and go back to her old chair by the fire in Sapps
Court, and her day-dreams of the huge cruel world she had all but seen
the last of; to watch through the hours for what was now the great
relaxation of her life, the coming of Dave and Dolly, and to listen
through the murmur of the traffic that grew and grew in the silence of
the house, for the welcome voices of the children on the stairs. But how
meet Gwen's impulsive decisions with anything but acquiescence? It was
not, with her, mere ready deference to the will of a superior; she might
have stickled at that, and found words to express a wish for her old
haunts and old habits of life. It was much more nearly the feeling a
mother might have had