“Ruthie! Ruthie! Come here!”
“Yes, dear, I am coming,” was the soothing reply. “What is it? Oh, my dear, what has happened?”
When she opened the door she saw her sister sitting up in bed, a look of fear on her face but unharmed. And a quick look in the adjoining apartment showed Dot to be peacefully slumbering, her “Alice-doll” close clasped in her arms.
“What was it, Tessie?” asked Ruth in a whisper, carefully closing Dot’s door so as not to awaken her. “What did you see?”
“I—I don’t just remember,” was the answer. “I was dreaming that I was riding on that funny Uncle Josh mule that knows Neale, and then a clown chased me and I fell off and the elephant came after me. I called to you, and—”
“Was it all only a dream, dear?” asked Ruth with a smile.
“No, it wasn’t all a dream,” said Tess slowly. “A man looked in the window at me.”
“What window?” asked Agnes.
Tess pointed to one of the two small casements in her small apartment. They opened on the bank of the river, and it would have been easy for any one passing along the bank of the stream to have looked into Tess’s windows, or, for that matter, into any of the openings on that side of the craft. But the windows, though open on account of the warm night, were protected by heavy screens to keep out mosquitoes and other insects.
“Do you really mean some one opened your window in the night, or did you just dream that, too?” asked Ruth. “You have very vivid dreams sometimes.”