of lazy enveloping firelight.

"Well, shall I begin? After all this _is_ tea in the Village."

"I should be very much interested indeed, Mrs. Severance," says Ted rather
gravely. "Check!" "How official you sound--almost as if you had a lot of
those funny little machines all the modern doctors use and were going to
mail me off to your pet sanatorium at once because you'd asked me what
green reminded me of and I said 'cheese' instead of 'trees.' And anyhow, I
never have any startling dreams--only silly ones--much too silly to tell--"

"Please go on." Ted's voice has really become quite clinical.

"Oh very well. They don't count when you only have them once--just when
they keep coming back and back to you--isn't that it?"

"I believe so."

Mrs. Severance's eyes waver a little--her mouth seeking for the proper kind
of dream.

"It's not much but it comes quite regularly--the most punctual,
old-fashioned-servant sort of a dream.

"It doesn't begin with sleep, you know--it begins with waking. At least
it's just as if I were in my own bed in my own apartment and then gradually
I started to wake. You know how you can feel that somebody else is in the
room though you can't see them--that's the feeling. And, of course being a
normal American business woman, my first idea is--burglars. And I'm very
cowardly for a minute. Then the cowardice passes and I decide to get up and