After those first few occasions Charlie came no more into any dream which she could recall even at the instant of waking. But the soothing spirit of hope and reassurance remained. If she dreamed of Florence, Florence wore the simple frocks of her girlhood and spoke as she used to do. Jem Brand, too, appeared only on his kind and helpful side. Once she had a curious dream of seeing two Jem Brands exactly alike, save that one was fresh and smiling and friendly, and inclined to nudge his strange dissipated-looking twin, and to ask why he was so grumpy and heavy. In her sleep, too, she saw Mrs. Morison, and Jane Smith, and Clementina, and each was back in her old place and doing well. Lucy could never remember what passed between them and her in the land of sleep, but somehow she knew it was something that explained things, something which made them feel that the past could not have ended otherwise than it had, but which also made her feel that it was quite natural that they should begin again and do better. She thought to herself once as she awoke— “I feel as if wherever Charlie is I am in his every thought, and that his every thought is a prayer always ascending on every way by which it can bring back blessing.” It was about this time that it struck Lucy that strangers very often spoke to her. She scarcely ever entered an omnibus or a railway carriage without somebody appealing to her for some trifling assistance, or confiding to her some little difficulty which they seemed to think might grow clearer if it were talked over. Once or twice she noticed that old folks or little children let ever so many people pass them by and then asked her to ring a stiff bell for them or to decipher an address. Sometimes she caught herself softly repeating Adelaide Proctor’s lines— “Who is the angel that cometh? Pain! Let us arise and go forth to greet him. Not in vain Is the summons gone for us to meet him; He will stay and darken our sun; He will stay A desolate night, a weary day. Since in that shadow our work is done, And in that shadow our crowns are won, Let us say still, while his bitter chalice Slowly into our heart is poured— ‘Blessed is he that cometh In the name of the Lord!’”