"Hush! If they are outside the door they may hear you, Bess."
With caution the two girls tiptoed to first one door and then the other and peered out.
In the cabin only a porter sleeping in an armchair was to be seen, while out on the deck not a soul was in sight.
"You must have been dreaming, Nan," said Bess, yawning. "Come, let us try to get some more rest before morning."
Nan was not satisfied and looked all around the stateroom, thinking a mouse might be wandering around. But no mouse was found, and at last both girls retired again. But Nan did not sleep very well and was glad when the rising sun proclaimed another day at hand.
Nan, swinging one bare foot experimentally over the edge of her berth, felt it caught and held tight by an invisible hand. She peered over the edge of the berth at the imminent risk of falling over herself and breaking her neck, and found, as she had expected, that Bess was her captor. The latter was holding on to her foot with one hand and rubbing her eyes sleepily with the other.
"Say, let go my foot," Nan hailed her inelegantly. "Haven't you got enough of your own that you have to steal one of mine?"
"You talk as if we were centipedes," said Bess, releasing Nan's foot and sitting up grumpily in the berth. "I told you I wouldn't sleep a wink last night, and I didn't."
"You aren't the only one," said Nan, as she swung her other foot over the edge of the berth and felt gingerly for a footing on the one below. "I didn't sleep very well myself. But never mind," she added, as she slipped safely to the floor, unharmed by her perilous descent. "We'll forget all about such little things as sleepless nights when we get out on deck. Have you forgotten that we reach Florida to-day?"
Bess stared at her a minute, then scrambled quickly out of bed and began pulling on her clothes hastily, getting them awry in her eagerness to get dressed in the shortest time possible.