“Melian, pull yourself together child,” he said gently. “You’ve had a bad dream, coming on top of what we were talking about.” But the look on her face was that of one who had had a very bad scare indeed, and somehow Mervyn had been under the impression that his niece was the sort of girl who would take a great deal of scaring. “Here, put this down. It’ll pull you together.”
“This” was a glass of port, which he had got out of the sideboard. She sipped a little, and looked as if she didn’t like it, then a little more, and felt better.
“That’s right,” he went on. “Now, look here, you’ve been using that room for over a fortnight, and have never thought of bothering about anything of the kind. Why I slept in it myself for several nights before you came.”
He had meant the assurance to be reassuring, but hardly had he made it than Mervyn saw he had made a false step.
“But why did you sleep in it, Uncle Seward?” said the girl, quickly.
“Eh? Why to see that it was comfortable—not damp and all that sort of thing.”
He wondered if she accepted this explanation. In his heart he doubted it.
“The cold touch on your face was probably a bat,” he went on. “Do you sleep with your window open?”
“Oh yes, always.”
“There you are then. I think we’ve got at the solution. Now let’s go straight up and look for the bat.”