Stories from Everybodys Magazine, 1910 | Page 8

the breath of Jennie's complaint.
The work in hand called for the dexterity of the true artist. With managerial instinct, Dorothea, repelling any attempt at conversation, waited only until Jennie was comfortably ensconced in bed, to turn the lamp down so that it glimmered in sickly fashion, before beginning proceedings. Then, seating herself beside the bed--an eerie figure in her straight, white gown--she shook her head dismally and indulged in a heartfelt sigh. Jennie, her nerves already on edge with the ghost stories of the hour before, turned startled eyes upon her.
"What is the matter? What is it?" she inquired anxiously.
"I--feel--strange," said Dorothea. She turned upon her victim a face full of uncanny suggestion. Divested of its perpetual smile, it seemed to Jennie as unfamiliar as a room from which an accustomed piece of furniture had been moved.
"I feel--strange. Something terrible is happening somewhere.--I can tell--I always can--I am going to have a vision--I can feel it--It always comes like this." With a quick hand she extinguished the lamp. "It will come in a dream," she muttered. "Let me sleep, oh, let me sleep!"
She made a sweeping pass with her out- stretched hands and, after a dramatic pause, fell heavily on her pillow, where she instantly proceeded to fall into a deep and trance-like slumber--a slumber that prevailed through the terrified questionings, whimperings, and agitated shakings by her friend.
It is an awesome thing to seek repose beside one wrapped in trance; it is worse to traverse unlighted halls and ghostly stairs in an effort to awake the gifted medium's family. Wrapped in terror as in an icy sheet, after divers Herculean efforts to rouse the log beside her, the responsive victim fell into a troubled slumber with her head well under the bedclothes.
The gray dawn was in the room when she was awakened by what seemed to be muffled sobs from--the figure beside her. In an instant wide awake and palpitating, she fell upon Dorothea. "What is it? Oh, what is it?" she cried.
"I have had it," said Dorothea in a sepulchral whisper. "The vision. Oh," she turned dramatically from the instant question, "I can't bear to tell you!--It was about you."
"Dorothea, you've GOT to tell me! I think you're HORRID. I'm going right downstairs to tell your mother."
"Of course I'm going to tell you," said the sybil crossly. She resumed her chest tones hurriedly. "I must tell you. It was sent to me to tell you. I wanted to prepare you."
"Prepare? Oh, Dorothea, what WAS it?"
Dorothea stood upright on the bed, and her eyes assumed the expression of those that see inward--Jennie stared at her, hypnotized, breathless.
"I saw a room," chanted the inspired one, "a room in a large city. I can see it now. It is a bedroom. There are blue rugs on the floor, and the furniture is oak. It has two windows. There is a canary bird in one, and the other has a seat with blue cushions."
"Why, that is my mother's room, Dorothea! You know it is."
"In the bed a woman is lying. She is sick. She is turning from one side to the other--she says, `Oh, where is my daughter? I want my daughter! Why doesn't she come back to me?'"
"Oh, Dorothea!" Jennie, tearful and excited, began to draw on her clothes. "That was my mother! It must have been! Oh, Dorothea!"
The sybil drove in the fine point again. "`Why doesn't she come back to me?'" she reiterated.
The program that had proceeded so smoothly now received an unexpected hitch. Jennie paused suddenly in her garmenting, relief growing in her face.
"After all," she observed, "I don't believe mother had anything more than one of her sick-headaches. She has them all the time. I wouldn't go home just for that. I do believe that is it, Dorothea."
It was time for rapid thought. Another moment and the fine dramatic work of the morning would have gone for naught. For a moment Dorothea staggered, but for a moment only. "I didn't tell you everything," she said mysteriously. "Your mother is not alone in the bed. She is holding something in her arms. She is saying--" she paused to give her climax its full effect-- "`Oh, why doesn't Jennie come home to see her little sister?'"
"Her little--?--Dorothea!"
It behooves the villain to be without conscience. No slightest shame visited the brazen one's heart at the sight of Jennie's instant joy and excitement. Modestly she accepted the tribute to her uncanny power; obligingly she assisted her friend to pack; martyr-like she acquiesced in Jennie's decision that the first train after breakfast would be none too early to bear her to that long-coveted delight--a baby sister. Moreover, she cannily advised her friend as to the mode of proceeding. "If you tell them downstairs why you are going, they may not let you. They