But Alfy reproved this.
“We haven’t any right to set times for things to be done and prayers to be answered, Dolly Doodles, and don’t say no more. It’s sort of saucy seems if, to ask for things and then keep thinkin’ in your insides that they won’t be give. You’ve asked and the Lord’s heard you—now get up and go to bed.”
“Oh! Alfy! I wish you had—had—a little more spiritually!” wailed Dorothy, rather stumbling over the long word but obediently rising from her knees and creeping between the snowy sheets. “And I don’t feel as if there was any use going to bed, any way. I know I shan’t sleep a wink.”
“Fiddlesticks! You just do beat the Dutch! As if great Jim Barlow hadn’t a decent head on his shoulders and needed the use o’ your ’n! He wouldn’t thank you for makin’ him out such a fool. Good night. I’m goin’ to sleep.”
Dorothy felt that this was simply heartless and sighed:
“I wish I could! But I can’t!”
Then she drew the covers about her shoulders, stared through the open window at the moonlit ground, felt the scene a trifle dazzling, and closed her lids just to rest her eyes a minute.
When she opened them again Alfaretta’s bed was empty and neatly spread. Except her own belongings the room was in perfect order for the day, the sun shone where the moonlight had been, and the cathedral clock on the cloister wall was striking—
“Oh! Oh! It’s morning! It’s late morning, too, that’s six, seven, nine o’clock! Oh! how could I sleep so? I never did before in all my life—except—well, sometimes, but I’m ashamed, I’m awfully ashamed of myself.”
As she sprang to her feet there was a tap at the door and a white-capped, white-aproned maid appeared, saying: