As I was back in childhood now, recalled by her word, I thought the best thing I could do to cheer her would be to bring her back there too--if I could.

So I patted the edge of the bed as I used to do when I was a wee kiddie and wanted her to comfort me, and said: "Sit down, Aunt Janet, and tell me." She yielded at once, and the look of the happy old days grew over her face as though there had come a gleam of sunshine.

She sat down, and I put out my hands as I used to do, and took her hand between them.

There was a tear in her eye as she raised my hand and kissed it as in old times.

But for the infinite pathos of it, it would have been comic: Aunt Janet, old and grey-haired, but still retaining her girlish slimness of figure, petite, dainty as a Dresden figure, her face lined with the care of years, but softened and ennobled by the unselfishness of those years, holding up my big hand, which would outweigh her whole arm; sitting dainty as a pretty old fairy beside a recumbent giant--for my bulk never seems so great as when I am near this real little good fairy of my life--seven feet beside four feet seven.
So she began as of old, as though she were about to soothe a frightened child with a fairy tale: "'Twas a veesion, I think, though a dream it may hae been.