Part 17 (1/2)
”It's all right!” she called. ”n.o.body's killed! Mary's just having a nightmare!”
By this time Mr. Sherman had opened the door, and the blinding glare of Phil's electric light flashed full in Mary's eyes. At the same instant Lloyd opened the door on the other side, between the two rooms, and Betty and Mrs. Sherman followed her in. So when Mary struggled back to wakefulness far enough to sit up and look around in a dazed way, the room seemed full of people and lights and voices, and she tried to ask what had happened. She was still sobbing and trembling.
”What's the matter, Mary?” called Phil from the hall. ”Were the Indians after you again?”
”Oh, it was awfuller than Indians,” wailed Mary, in a shrill, excited voice. ”It was the worst nightmare I ever had! I can't shake it off. I'm scared yet.”
”Tell us about it,” said Mrs. Sherman, soothingly. ”That's the best remedy, for the terror always evaporates in the telling, and makes one wonder how anything foolish could have seemed frightful.”
”I--was being married,” wailed Mary, ”to a man I couldn't see. And just as soon as it was over he turned from the altar and said, '_Now_ we'll begin to lead a cat and dog life.' And, oh, it was so awful,” she continued, sobbingly, the terror of the dream still holding her, ”he--he _barked_ at me! And he showed his teeth, and I had to spit and mew and hump my back whether _I_ wanted to or not.” Her voice grew higher and more excited with every sentence. ”And I could feel my claws growing longer and longer, and I knew I'd never have fingers again, only just paws with fur on 'em! Ugh! It made me sick to feel the fur growing over me that way. I cried and cried. Now as I tell about it, it begins to sound silly, but it was awful then,--so dark, and me hanging by my claws to the edge of the wood-shed roof, ready to drop off. I thought Phil was in the house, and I tried to call him, but I couldn't remember his name.
I got mixed up with the Philip on the s.h.i.+lling, and I kept yelling, s.h.i.+ll! Philling! s.h.i.+lling! and I couldn't make him understand. He wouldn't come!”
As she picked up the corner of the sheet to wipe her eyes Mrs. Sherman and the girls burst out laughing, and there was an echoing peal of amus.e.m.e.nt in the hall. The affair would not have seemed half so ridiculous in the daylight, but to be called out of bed at that hour to listen to such a dream, told only as Mary Ware could tell it, impressed the entire family as one of the funniest things that had ever happened.
They laughed till the tears came.
”I don't see what ever put such a silly thing into my head,” said Mary, finally, beginning to feel mortified as she realized what an excitement she had created for nothing.
”It was Rob's talking about people who live a regular cat and dog life,”
said Betty. ”Don't you remember how long we talked about it to-day down in the clover-patch?”
”You mean yesterday,” prompted Phil from the hall, ”for it's nearly morning now. And, Mary, I'll tell you why you had it. It's a warning! A solemn warning! It means that you must never, never marry.”
”That's what I thought, too,” quavered Mary, so seriously that they all laughed again.
”I hope everybody will excuse me for waking them up,” called Mary, as they began to disperse to their rooms. ”Oh, dear!” she added to Joyce, as she lay back once more on her pillow. ”Why is it that I am always doing such mortifying things! I am _so_ ashamed of myself.”
The lights went out again, and after a few final giggles from Lloyd and Betty, silence settled once more over the house. But the terror of the nightmare had taken such hold upon Mary that she could not close her eyes.
”Joyce,” she whispered, ”do you mind if I come over into your bed? I'm nearly paralyzed, I'm so scared again.”
Slipping across the floor as soon as Joyce had given a sleepy consent, Mary crept in beside her sister in the narrow bed, and lay so still she scarcely breathed, for fear of disturbing her. Presently she reached out and gently clasped the end of Joyce's long plait of hair. It was comforting to be so near her. But even that failed to convince her entirely that the dream was a thing of imagination. It seemed so real, that several times before she fell asleep she laid her hands against her face to make sure that her fingers had not developed claws, and that no fur had started to grow on them.
The dreams told around the breakfast-table next morning seemed tame in comparison to Mary's recital the night before. Rob had had none at all, which was interpreted to mean that he would live and die an old bachelor. Miles Bradford had a dim recollection of being in an automobile with a girl who seemed to be a sort of a human kaleidoscope, for her face changed as the dream progressed, until she had looked like every woman he ever knew. They could think of no interpretation for that dream. Lloyd's was fully as indefinite.
”I thought I was making a cake,” she said, ”and there was a big bowl of eggs on the table. But every time I started to break one Mom Beck would say, 'Don't do that, honey. Don't you see it is somebody's haid?' And suah enough, every egg I took up had somebody's face on it, like those painted Eastah eggs; Rob's, and Phil's, and Malcolm's, and Doctah Bradford's, and evah so many I'd nevah seen befoah.”
”A very appropriate dream for a Queen of Hearts,” said Phil, ”and anybody can see it's only a repet.i.tion of Mammy Easter's fortune, the 'row of lovahs in the teacup.' Tell us which one you are going to choose.”
”It's Joyce's turn,” was the only answer Lloyd would make.
”And my dream was positively brilliant,” replied Joyce. ”I thought we were all at The Beeches, and Allison, and Kitty, and all of us were making Limericks. Kitty began:
”'There was a lieutenant named Logan, Who found one day a small brogan.'
Then she stuck, and couldn't get any farther, and Allison had to be smart and pun on my name. She made up a line:
”'So what will Joyce Ware if she meets a great bear?'
n.o.body could get the last rhyme for awhile, but after floundering around a few minutes I had a sudden inspiration and sprang up and struck an att.i.tude as if I were on the stage, and solemnly thundered out:
”'And how can he shoot him with _no_ gun?'