But at that moment Dacer came out of another room, where he had evidently been smoking a pipe, and said, "Oh, well, stick round a little. She might wake up."
The nurse gave him a sharp look; and then, being really discreet and tactful, retired into Room 11 and shut the door. Lita and the doctor were left facing each other in the hall.
"Let's go out," he said, "where I can smoke. It's a good sort of evening—with a moon."
"Mercy!" answered Lita. "How do you think a girls' school is run? I couldn't do that."
"I thought the chairman of the self-government committee could do anything."
"On the contrary, she has to be particularly careful, and not go about exposing herself to being patted on the head."
"She was lucky worse than that didn't happen, masquerading as an infant." And then, without the slightest pause, but with a complete change of tone, Lita heard him saying: "No, I'm sorry; but I think it would be better not tonight.... Ah, Miss Barton, I was just saying to Miss Hazlitt that as the patient had fallen asleep it would be better not to disturb her again tonight."
"Of course," said Miss Barton, who, it appeared, was coming upstairs behind Lita's back. "I think if you ran back to the study, Lita, you'd get in for the end of the reading."
And as she turned obediently away she heard Miss Barton suggesting that if Doctor Dacer found the infirmary dull, the sitting room in her cottage was at his service. No, Doctor Dacer had a good deal of work to do. Lita smiled to herself. He had not seemed so busy a few minutes before.
She had never been in love—never even deeply interested before. She had looked with surprise and envy on her classmates; not only Aurelia, with her devouring passion for Valentine; but Carrie Waldron, the senior president, who worshiped a dark-eyed motion-picture actor; and Doris Payne, who loved a great violinist to whom she never expected to speak. The authorities were terribly down on this sort of thing; but Lita, who knew more about it than the authorities, was not sure. Would Carrie be studying Spanish at odd moments so as to know more about her idol's great bull-fighter part—would Doris work so hard at her music—would Aurelia be learning Romeo and Juliet by heart as she did her hair in the morning—Romeo was a part Valentine was always contemplating—if it were not for love? More, would Miss Barton's course in English constitutional history be so interesting if Miss Barton did not feel—as the school had discovered—a romantic passion for Oliver Cromwell? Certainly not!