"Why doesn't he come back! Oh! what will my mother think of my staying away like this? All the help she has now, too, and needing me so much. I'll wait just five minutes longer, then I'll go home, anyway, whether that 'witness' who's to tell me so much about myself and my real father and mother comes or not. No father or mother could be as dear to me as father John and mother Martha. I don't want any others. Let them keep their old fortune the rest of the time, since they've kept it so long and never sent for me," said Dorothy C. to herself, after she had waited with what slight patience she could for Mr. Smith's return, and more than an hour had already passed.
Hitherto she had not deemed it polite to explore her present quarters, but now began to do so in an idle sort of way. If her "lawyer" left her so long alone he couldn't blame her if she amused herself in some manner; and first she examined the few books which were tossed in a heap on the untidy desk. They did not look like law-books, many of them, though one or two were bound in dirty calf-skin and showed much handling. In any case none of them interested her.
Next she tried to open the window, that gave upon the hall from one side of the room as the door by which she had entered did upon another, but found it fast.
"Why, that's funny! What would anybody want to nail an inside window tight for? Oh! maybe because this is an apartment house, he said, and other people might come in. My father says he wouldn't like to live in a flat, it's so mixed up with different families. He'd rather have a tiny house like ours and have it separate. Well! if I can't open the window, I reckon I can that door which must go into a back room."
Immediately she proceeded to try this second door, which was opposite the nailed window, and, to her delight, found that it yielded easily to her touch. But the room thus disclosed was almost as dark as the "office" she had just quitted, although it had two windows at the back. The upper sashes of these had been lowered as far as possible, but behind them were wooden shutters and these were also nailed, or spiked fast. There were crescent-shaped holes in the tops of the shutters and through these a little air and light penetrated into the gloom of what, now that her eyes had become accustomed to the dimness, she perceived was a bedroom. From one side of this opened a bathroom, whose window was secured like those of the bedroom, but where was the cheerful sound of running water.
Now terribly frightened by her strange surroundings, Dorothy's throat grew so dry and parched that she hastened to get a drink from the faucet, beneath which hung a rusty tin cup. Then she thought:
"Maybe I can get out into the hall by this bathroom door!"
It could not be opened, and now half-frantic with fear, the imprisoned girl ran from one door to another, only to find that while she had the freedom of the three apartments, every exit from these into the hall was securely bolted, or locked, upon the outside, and realized that it was with some evil intention she had been brought to this place.
For hours she worked over doors, then windows, and back again to the doors—testing her puny strength against them, only to fail each time. The heat was intolerable in the rooms, for it was the top story of a small house with the sun beating against the roof. Even below, in the street, people mopped their faces and groaned beneath this unseasonable temperature. As for poor Dorothy, she felt herself growing faint, and remembered that she, as well as her mother, had taken but a light breakfast; but her eyes had now grown accustomed to the dim light of the rooms and the gas jet still flickered in the "office," so that, after a time, she threw herself on the bed, worn out with her efforts and hoping a few moments' rest might help her "to think a way out" of her prison.
How long she slept, she never knew, for it was that of utter exhaustion, but she was suddenly roused by the sound of a bolt shot in its lock, and the opening of the "office" door. It was Mr. Smith returning, profuse with apologies which Dorothy scarcely heard and wholly disdained, as, darting past him, she made for the entrance with all her speed.