'"I...have a strange yearning in my heart whenever I see a mother with her baby in her arms. Nay, my dear," - (and by a sudden blaze which sprang up from the fall of the unstirred coals, I saw that her eyes were full of tears - gazing intently on some vision of what might have been) - "do you know, I dream sometimes that I have a little child - always the same - a little girl of about two years old; she never grows older, though I have dreamt about her for many years. I don't think I ever dream of any words or sounds she makes; she is very noiseless and still, but she comes to me when she is very sorry or very glad, and I have wakened with the clasp of her dear little arms round my neck. Only last night - perhaps because I had gone to sleep thinking of this ball for Pheobe - my little darling came in my dream, and put up her mouth to be kissed, just as I have seen real babies do to real mothers before going to bed."'
Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford, p.130.
