_Dream Haven!_ How cool the name sounds! What memories of sunshiny mornings it brings back. Day after day I watched and waited for the letter from America. There were times when I made sure that I could feel it approaching. “It will be here to-morrow,” I said. I tortured myself by picturing how different life would have been had I taken Randall at his word. It was the kind of torture that became a luxury. I should have brought her to Dream Haven, perhaps. I played with my fancy, pretending that we were here together; so actual were my imaginings that I was incredulous when, on coming to myself, I found her absent. The dreams were more real than the reality. Wakened in the morning by the twittering of birds, I would raise myself on my elbow and marvel at the sweet flushed face beside me on the pillow and the glorious, yellow streaming hair. Slowly it would fade and vanish. There were walks which we took through the lonely woodlands when all the delayed intimacies of love filled life with unashamed passion. There were wild days on the downs, when rain and wind, driving our bodies together, stung me to a new protecting ecstasy. There were quiet evenings in the gloaming--Sunday evenings were the best--when Vi sat at the piano playing and singing, while Dorrie knelt beside her, fingering her dress. All these ghost-scenes stand clear in my memory as though they had happened. I must have cultivated this unreal life to the point of danger in my effort to escape the ache of the present. Had I lived by myself I might have crossed the border-line, but the comedy of Uncle Obad was always drawing me back. He kept watch over me like a kind old spaniel. In the morning from where I sat in the garden, I could see him farther down the slope through the orchard, trotting in and out his pens with his disreputable dust-coat flapping. Just as once, when he had no money, the appearance of affluence had been his hobby, so now, when he could afford to dress respectably, he delighted in looking shabby. He left his clothes unfastened in the most unexpected places; Aunt Lavinia was continually making grabs at him and buttoning him up. In the afternoon she sent us off for long walks together to prevent his getting fat. On these occasions he would explain his loose philosophy, which consisted of a large-minded, stalwart carelessness. “Keep your end up; it’s in each one of us to be happy. Don’t do too much remembering; live your day as it comes. Your Grandmother calls me the Spuffler--so I am. Where’d I be now, I ask you, if I hadn’t spuffled?” So the summer fled by, and the woods grew browner, and the air had a sharper tang. The letter from Sheba had not come. I could mark time no longer; at last I left for Woadley. CHAPTER III--NARCOTICS