On their way to Fernborough that evening, Quincy and Tom decided it would be best not to mention the real object of their going to Europe, so Mr. Chripp thought it was only a pleasure trip. He did not object to his son going,--but he made one condition, that Tom should visit the village in old England in which he was born and bring him back a picture of the little thatched cottage in which Mr. Chripp had lived until the tales of high wages and better prospects in America had drawn him from his native land. Quincy had said good-bye to all his relatives, friends, and acquaintances except Mr. Obadiah Strout. That gentleman should have no reason to say he had been snubbed. When Quincy entered the store Mr. Strout was weighing some butter. Quincy noticed that the wooden plate and a sheet of thick paper were put on the scales before the butter was cut from the tub. “Well, what can I do for you, Master Sawyer?” said Strout when the customer who had paid thirty cents a pound for butter including wood and paper had departed. “I came to say good-bye. I am going to Europe.” “I s'pose you'll like England with its 'ristocrats and kings so well that you won't come back to these ordinary United States.” Quincy knew that Mr. Strout wished he would stay in England, so he replied, “Oh, no. I'm coming back sure. I know a little about weighing groceries and I've decided to come back and go into business.” “What good will your book larnin' do you then?” “For one thing, they teach something besides dead languages in colleges nowadays. I studied moral philosophy, which points out the difference between right and wrong, between honesty and dishonesty, between fifteen ounces of butter and one ounce of wood and paper, and sixteen ounces of butter to the pound.” With this parting shot, Quincy joined Tom in front of the store and they started for Boston, from which port the _Gallia_ was to sail two days later. CHAPTER XXII ALICE'S DREAM “Do you believe in dreams, Aunt Ella?” “No, Alice, I do not.” “Not if they come true?” “Only a coincidence. If they don't come true are you willing to acknowledge that all are unreliable? Or, if some prove true do you consider them all reliable? You can have either horn of the dilemma.” “What causes dreams, Aunt Ella?” “Usually what's on your mind. Your brain doesn't wake up all at once and dreams flit through it until it gets full control.” “What if a person dreams the same thing three nights in succession?” “That proves nothing. When my first husband died I dreamed for a month or more that he was still alive and that I must wake him at a certain time because the morning he died he was to take a train at an early hour. You make your own dreams.” “But supposing you see something in your dreams that you never saw before--that you never knew existed until you viewed it when asleep?” “What have you been dreaming, Alice?” “You won't laugh at me?” “I promise not to laugh, but I won't promise to believe.”