"Clara, you will never be so foolish! I gave you credit for better sense. Dreams are all very well in their places--to amuse old women and children--but in these days they should not be allowed to influence actions. You can see the bright sunshine, the busy work-a-day world around you, and yet you can retain remembrance of a ridiculous dream! I thought dreams passed away with the night." "Of course a great part of the vivid impression has passed with the night," she replied, confessing what was the actual fact; "but I will abide by the night's impression, nevertheless. I look at it in this light--my remaining at home can hurt no one, it cannot bring harm in any way, while my going may bring me harm; we cannot tell. I am fully decided," she continued, in a firm tone; "and do you eat your breakfast and cease staring at me." "Perhaps you fear the train will come to grief, and pitch us all into coffins made to fit your hearse." "Well, I don't know," returned Clara. "If I did get into the train on Sunday morning, I should be unusually pleased to find myself safe out of it again." Mr. Lake said no more; in this frame of mind reasoning was useless. But he felt persuaded the fancy would wear away, and his wife go contentedly enough with the rest of them. Nothing more was said that day, which was Friday. On the next day, Saturday, two of the Miss Jupps called on Clara, full of the following morning's excursion. A large family was that of the Jupps--six sons and six daughters, all living. The sons were out in the world--one in the army, one in the navy, one in the church, one reading for the bar, one here, one there; Oliver, the youngest of them, was just now at home. The six daughters were all at home, and marrying men seemed to fight shy of so large a host. Social, pleasant, chatty girls were they, the youngest two-and-twenty, the age of the eldest locked up in the church's register. Mr. and Mrs. Jupp were a quiet, inoffensive couple, completely eclipsed by their sons and daughters; not that any were undutiful, but the old people belonged to a bygone age, and were scarcely equal to the innovations of this. Mr. Jupp had once been high sheriff of the county: it was the one great event of the Jupps' life, imparting to them an importance which their pride never quite lost sight of. They lived in a large house abutting on the street of Katterley, about five minutes' walk from Mr. Lake's. Mary Ann and Margaret Jupp had come to gossip about the proposed Sunday excursion. They were pleasant, voluble girls (to pay them the compliment of still calling them girls), with light hazel eyes and reddish hair. The sisters were all much alike--these two, the eldest; Louisa and Rose, the youngest. They had on flimsy skirts, nankeen-coloured jackets, and straw hats. They sat in the shady room open to the trailing honeysuckles, talking to Clara.