“This is the very darkest place could ever be, seems if! ouch! that hurt!” said the prisoner aloud, to bolster her own courage, and as she stumbled against a trunk that bruised her ankle. “I’ll take more care.”
So she did: reasoning that people generally piled things against a wall, that is, in such a place, for greater convenience. With outstretched hands she felt her way and at last was rewarded by finding the blankets she sought. Here, too, were folded several cots, that were needed at times, like Commencement, when many strangers were at Oak Knowe. But she didn’t trouble to set up one of these, even if she could have done so in that gloom. But a blanket she could manage, and beside the cots she could feel a heap of them. In a very few minutes she had pulled down several of these and spread them on the floor; and a little later had wrapped them about her and was sound asleep—“as a bug in a rug, like Dawkins says,” her last, untroubled thought. So, though a prisoner, for many hours she slumbered peacefully.
Down in the breakfast-room matters went on as usual. Or if many of the girls and a few of the pupils seemed unduly sleepy, that was natural enough, considering the frivolities and late hours of the night before.
Even the Lady Principal, sitting calmly in her accustomed place, looked very pale and tired; and Winifred, observing this, whispered to her neighbor:
“I don’t believe we’ll get another party very soon. Just look at Miss Tross-Kingdon. She’s as white as a ghost and so nervous she can hardly sit still. I never saw her that way before. The way she keeps glancing toward the doors, half-scared every time she hears a noise, is queer. I wonder if she’s expecting somebody!”
“Likely somebody’s late and she’s waiting to say: ‘Miss’—whoever it is—‘your excuse, please?’ I wonder who ’twill be! and say, look at the Aldrich ten—can you see Dorothy?”
Winifred glanced around and answered, with real surprise: “Why, she’s absent! If it were I nobody’d be astonished, ’cause I always have the same excuse: ‘Overslept.’ But Dolly? Oh! I hope she isn’t sick!”
And immediately the meal was over, Winifred hurried to the Lady Principal and asked:
“Please, Miss Muriel, can you tell me, is Dorothy Calvert ill?”
“Excuse me, Winifred, I am extremely busy,” returned Miss Tross-Kingdon, and hurried away as if she were afraid of being questioned further.