Suddenly in the garden below she heard voices. A man was speaking earnestly, but in a tone too low to be audible at the window above. A woman answered him, the pair seeming to discuss something with much emphasis. Her curiosity greatly excited by so unusual a circumstance, Patty leaned out of the window to discover, if possible, who were the speakers.
"Well, it's the Lord's will," she heard the woman's voice say. "And I, for one, ain't a-going to run a muck agin it."
"It is Bathalina!" the listener said to herself. "Who in the world can she be talking to?"
She leaned farther from her window, but by an unlucky movement of her arm sent her fan fluttering down to the gravel walk below. The speakers departed in different directions like phantoms, and Patty was left once again to her own reflections. At first she speculated upon the possible nature of the interview she had interrupted; then her thoughts came back to her fan. It chanced to be one painted by an artist-cousin, and one of which she was fond: a thunder-storm was rapidly approaching, and the fan likely to be ruined. Her ankle was fast recovering, and she was not long in determining to go down into the garden for her property. With the aid of the furniture and the stair-railings she got safely down to the side-door, cautiously unbolted it and slipped out. The fan was only a few steps from the door, but a rolling-stone lay in wait for the lame ankle, and gave it so severe a turn that Patty sank down a miserable heap upon the ground. She sat there a moment to recover herself, and then crawled back to the door-steps. Seated here, she gazed ruefully at the fan, a white spot upon the dusky walk, and, coddling her aching ankle in her hands, wondered how she was to regain her room.
At that moment brisk steps sounded on the walk, approaching the spot where she sat. A tall form defined itself amid the darkness, pausing before her.
"Good-evening," said the voice of Tom Putnam. "Is it you, Patty?"
"Yes. It is I."
"Would it be polite to ask if you walk in your sleep?"
"I can't walk awake at any rate," she replied, half laughing and half crying, "whatever I may do in my sleep."
"Then, you must have come here for air in your dreams."