She walked slowly home trying to think of a way of bringing their plan to a successful issue, and so doing something, at least, towards the diffusion of a better spirit among the people. She could not bear the thought of being idle while there was a vague possibility of the slightest improvement being made in the present aspect of affairs. But her brain seemed willing to turn to anything but that, and she found herself as far off as ever from any settlement by the time she reached home. Her father had not yet returned, and the boys were out, so she sat down in the window to await their arrival. She had fallen into a sort of dream, and was performing all sorts of impossible feats before an admiring audience, composed for the most part of miners, but among whom she could distinguish the faces of her father, Mabel, Charlie, and a certain Mr. Laurence, the identical good-looking Methodist minister to whom Mona Cameron had on one occasion alluded. Strangely enough, or rather, not strangely at all, for what impossible thing is not possible in a dream, Mona was her fellow-actor in this vision, and the two were in the midst of some wonderful acrobatic display, when they happened to touch each other and the result was a sudden "phiz," not a moral "phiz," such as the pupils of Miss Marsden's school were in the habit of witnessing, but a real, or rather what seemed to her a real chemical "phiz" in which both were involved, and without much surprise she beheld herself seethe and bubble "just like lemonade," as she afterwards described it, and finally vanish into viewless vapour. Just at that moment a sharp report in her ear caused her to start and wake, and there, sure enough, was her father in the act of drawing the cork of a lemonade bottle, while Archie poured out the contents of another, which must by some mysterious means or other have got into her dream. "Well, sleepyhead!" exclaimed Archie, "did you condescend to wake at last? Do you know how long you have been sleeping?" Minnie looked round in half-awakened surprise. The curtains were drawn, the gas-jets lit, and the supper on the table, nearly finished too. "Why did you allow me to sleep so long?" asked Minnie in rather an injured tone. "As to that," replied Archie, "I'd have wakened you fast enough--you know my usual accommodating spirit--but papa would not hear of it." "And really you did look so uncommonly tired," added Ned, "that we all thought it a charity to let you go on. I hope it was a pleasant dream--you seemed to do a great deal of talking during it." Minnie laughed, and taking her seat at the table proceeded to entertain them with an account of it, and its absurd termination, which was received with shouts of laughter, and Minnie was glad to observe that her father joined them in their merriment without the appearance of force or strain, which she had noticed on similar occasions during the last few weeks.