She dropped her eyes, and turning toward the open hearth, held out her hands to the crackling blaze. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said sweetly and like the clever little strategist that she was, opened her own offensive in the enemy’s territory. “I have the bad habit of occasionally walking in my sleep, Mrs. Lawson—and especially when I spend the night in a strange bed. Perhaps it’s nervousness—I don’t know.”
Mrs. Lawson threw her a sharp glance. “Sit down, Janet,” she suggested, pointing to a chair near the fire, and taking one herself across the hearth. “You’re—I mean, you don’t seem to be at all nervous this morning.”
“Good old pulse!” thought Dorothy. Then aloud—“No, I feel splendidly, thank you. But, you see, I didn’t walk in my sleep last night.”
“But surely you can’t tell when you do it!”
“Oh, yes, I can.” Dorothy’s manner and tone were those of the simple schoolgirl proud of an unusual accomplishment.
“You don’t expect me to believe that you know what you’re doing when you walk in your sleep, Janet. That’s impossible!”
“Not while I’m sleepwalking, Mrs. Lawson. That wasn’t what I said—but when I have been sleepwalking—there’s a difference, you see?”
“Well?” The lady of the house objected to being contradicted and took no trouble to hide it.
“It’s really very simple,” explained Dorothy, painstakingly, as though she were speaking to a rather stupid child. “I found out how to do it. You see, I’ve been walking in my sleep ever since I was a little thing. When I get in bed at night I leave my slippers on the floor beside it pointed outward—away from the bed. We all leave them that way, I guess. It’s the natural thing to do.”
“But what have slippers got to do with it?” Laura was becoming impatient.