“I hate common-sense!” cried Molly, coming to the support of her friend. “Anyway, I don’t see what good we girls do standing here in this draughty hall. Let’s go to bed.”
“And leave the house wide open this way?”
Dorothy’s sense of responsibility was serious enough to her though amusing to the others, and it was Monty who brought her back to facts by remarking:
“The house always has been taken care of, Dolly Doodles, and I guess it will be now. Jim and I will get some axes and lop off these branches that forced the door in and prop it shut the best way we can. Then I’ll go down to the lodge with him to sleep for he says there’s a room I can have. See? You girls will be well protected!” and he nodded toward the group of servants gathered at the rear of the great hall. “So you’d better take Molly’s advice and go up-stairs.”
Dolly wasn’t pleased to be thus set coolly aside in “her own house” but there seemed nothing better to do than follow this frank advice; therefore, taking a hand of each of her girl friends, she led the way toward her own pretty chamber and two small rooms adjoining.
“Aunt Betty thought we three’d like to be close together, and anyway, if we had all come that I wanted to invite we’d have to snug up some. So she told Dinah to fix her dressing-room for one of you—that’s this side mine; and the little sewing-room for the other. She’s put single beds in them and Dinah is to sleep on her cot in this wide hall outside our doors. It seemed sort of foolish to me, first off, when darling Auntie planned it, as if anything could happen to make us need Dinah so near; but now—My! I can’t stop trembling, somehow. I was so frightened and sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too, and I’m scared, too; but I’m sleepier’n I’m ary one,” yawned Alfaretta.
“I’m sleepy, too;” assented Molly; and even the excited Dorothy felt a strange drowsiness creeping over her. It would be the correct thing, she had imagined, to lie awake and grieve over the loss of Mrs. Calvert’s beloved tree, which would now be cut into ignominious firewood and burned upon a hearth; but—in five minutes after her head had touched her pillow she was sound asleep as her mates already were.
Outside, the storm abated and the moon arose, lighting the scenery with its brilliance and setting the still dripping trees aglitter with its glory. Moonlight often made Dorothy wakeful and did so on this eventful night. Its rays streaming across her unshaded window roused her to sit up, and with the action came remembrance.