The Magic

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She sat up, resting on her elbow, and her breathing came short and fast.

"It does not--melt away," she panted. "Oh, I never had such a dream before." She scarcely dared to stir; but at last she pushed the bedclothes aside, and put her feet on the floor with a rapturous smile.

"I am dreaming--I am getting out of bed," she heard her own voice say; and then, as she stood up in the midst of it all, turning slowly from side to side--"I am dreaming it stays--real! I'm dreaming it FEELS real. It's bewitched--or I'm bewitched. I only THINK I see it all." Her words began to hurry themselves. "If I can only keep on thinking it," she cried, "I don't care! I don't care!"

She stood panting a moment longer, and then cried out again.

"Oh, it isn't true!" she said. "It CAN'T be true! But oh, how true it seems!"

The blazing fire drew her to it, and she knelt down and held out her hands close to it--so close that the heat made her start back.

"A fire I only dreamed wouldn't be HOT>, she cried.

She sprang up, touched the table, the dishes, the rug; she went to the bed and touched the blankets. She took up the soft wadded dressing-gown, and suddenly clutched it to her breast and held it to her cheek.

"It's warm. It's soft!" she almost sobbed. "It's real. It must be!"

She threw it over her shoulders, and put her feet into the slippers.

"They are real, too. It's all real!" she cried. "I am NOT>- I am NOT dreaming!"

She almost staggered to the books and opened the one which lay upon the top. Something was written on the flyleaf--just a few words, and they were these:

"To the little girl in the attic. From a friend."

When she saw that--wasn't it a strange thing for her to do-- she put her face down upon the page and burst into tears.

"I don't know who it is," she said; "but somebody cares for me a little. I have a friend."

She took her candle and stole out of her own room and into Becky's, and stood by her bedside.

"Becky, Becky!" she whispered as loudly as she dared. "Wake up!"

When Becky wakened, and she sat upright staring aghast, her face still smudged with traces of tears, beside her stood a little figure in a luxurious wadded robe of crimson silk. The face she saw was a shining, wonderful thing. The Princess Sara--as she remembered her-- stood at her very bedside, holding a candle in her hand.

"Come," she said. "Oh, Becky, come!"

Becky was too frightened to speak. She simply got up and followed her, with her mouth and eyes open, and without a word.

And when they crossed the threshold, Sara shut the door gently and drew her into the warm, glowing midst of things which made her brain reel and her hungry senses faint. "It's true! It's true!" she cried. "I've touched them all. They are as real as we are. The Magic has come and done it, Becky, while we were asleep--the Magic that won't let those worst things EVER quite happen."