She burst into a merry laugh, and then came a few tears, which were not all of the merriment of which she let them pass as the consequence, remarking, as she wiped them away, “But no one can tell, Mr. Wingfold,--and I’m sure Miss Lingard would be astonished to hear--what pleasure I have while lying unable to move. I suppose I benefit by what people call the law of compensation! How I hate the word! As if THAT was the way the Father of Jesus Christ did, and not his very best to get his children, elder brothers and prodigal sons, home to his heart! You heard what my uncle said about dreams the other day?” she resumed after a little pause. “Yes. I thought it very sensible,” replied the curate. “It all depends on the sort, don’t it?” said Rachel. “Some of mine I would not give for a library. They make me grow, telling me things I should never learn otherwise. I don’t mean any rubbish about future events, and such like. Of all useless things a knowledge of the future seems to me the most useless, for what are you to do with a thing before it exists? Such a knowledge could only bewilder you as to the right way to take--would make you see double instead of single. That’s not the sort I mean at all.--You won’t laugh at me, Mr. Wingfold?” “I can scarcely imagine anything less likely.” “Then I don’t mind opening my toy-box to you.--In my dreams, for instance, I am sometimes visited by such a sense of freedom as fills me with a pure bliss unknown to my waking thoughts except as a rosy cloud on the horizon. As if they were some heavenly corporation, my dreams present me, not with the freedom of some poor little city like London, but with the freedom of all space.” The curate sat and listened with wonder--but with no sense of unfitness; such speech and such thought suited well with the face that looked up from the low pillow with its lovely eyes--for lovely they were, with a light that had both flash and force.