"How perfectly delightful! Tell me more, Nonie. I believe you have a witch for a fairy grandmother!"
Nonie giggled. "That's 'nother of my games. I've had that for a long time. She's coming some day and touch me with a wand and make me into a beautiful lady. And I'll go out and step into my carriage and a footman all shiny and white will say: 'To her Majesty's!' And I'll sit in the best parlor and drink chocolate and real whipped cream from cups with pink roses on 'em, and a page will say: 'Do have another piece of cake, your ladyship,' and—and I'll say, 'I couldn't hold another mouthful, thanks, I've had five!'"
Nancy and Nonie laughed together. Then Nonie sighed.
"Do any dreams ever come true? I mean the kind of things you sit and think about and want?"
"Maybe, if you dream hard enough, Nonie," Nancy answered, soberly.
"'Course I know some of the things I pretend can't come true but maybe some will. Miss Denny told me they might. Only she said I'd have to make 'em. She's my teacher. I love her. I guess you're most as nice as she is. She gives me books and tells me when I say bad grammar. She says we must just think beautiful things and then put them into the right words—but it's hard! I forget awful easy. She don't—I mean, she does not—think I'm queer. Liz calls me 'loony!'"
"Oh, no—Nonie," protested Nancy, "Liz just can't understand."
"But you do, don't you? Miss Denny did, too." Nonie was silent for a moment. "After I've learned a lot more I want to go out in the world with Davy and make a fortune. I don't know just how—but I want to do grand things. There's some places, ain't there—aren't there—that's so big folks wouldn't know we were Hopworths? Davy says he wants to go to sea and Liz says he'll come to no good end like Pa, but mebbe I can take him with me." She sighed. "It's awful long off 'til I grow up, though, I'm only twelve."
Then Nonie added slowly, as though she was sharing a secret: "There's one more thing I pretend. After I go to bed I shut my eyes tight and pretend that a beautiful lady with hair all gold and eyes that twinkle like stars and smile at you, comes and sits by my bed and takes hold of my hand and pats it and then kisses me, sort of on my forehead, and says: 'Good night, sweetness,' like that, in a voice that's soft like music and not a bit of the holler-kind!" Nonie gave a little sigh of rapture. "It's nice, you see, to have a make-believe mother like that! I s'pose a real one wouldn't have time. Anyways, Liz says she'd like to see a real mother do more for young 'uns than she does!"
Nancy blinked a sudden rush of tears from her eyes. She felt that she had seen bared the very soul of a child—a soul hungry for kindness and for love. She reached out and took one of the small hands in her own.