“Feel better, do you?” asked Miss Mordaunt kindly, as she noted a drift of colour coming back to the pale face of Dorothy.
“Oh yes, I am better now, thank you. I shall be quite all right after we have walked for a little way in the air. What a nice night it is.”
“I was going to take a bus, but we will walk if you would like it better,” said Miss Mordaunt.
“I should like to walk; it is so cool and fresh out here.” Dorothy was drawing long breaths and revelling in the strong sweep of the wind.
“It is funny how these elderly ladies will have their rooms so fearfully overheated,” remarked Miss Mordaunt; and then she asked a string of questions about Dorothy’s visit, the condition of Mrs. Wilson after her shock, and that sort of thing, to all of which Dorothy returned mechanical answers.
Her mind was in a whirl still. She felt quite unable to think clearly, and her outstanding emotion was intense dislike to Mrs. Wilson, whose bread and butter she had so recently been eating.
“Bah, it is just horrid!” she exclaimed aloud.
“Is it the mud you don’t like, or are you tired of walking?” asked Miss Mordaunt a little anxiously.
“I don’t think there is any mud—none to matter, at least—and I simply love walking at night,” replied Dorothy. “I was thinking of Mrs. Wilson, and of the perfumes in which she is soaked, and the joss sticks that were burning in the room most of the time that I was there. Oh! the air was thick.”
“Of course you would feel bad in such an atmosphere. Forget about it now. Think of clean and wholesome things, of wide spaces swept by wind and drenched with rain. Mind is a mighty force, you know, and the person who thinks of clean things feels clean, inside and out.”