“But this is the hired girl’s bedroom,” she objected. “With all them grand rooms furnished with mahogany, I don’t see why you should pick this one out for yourself.”
I confessed to her my attachment for the little room in the loft behind it and my feeling that if I did decide to stay here, this was the very part of the house I would want.
“You never can tell about people,” said Mrs. Dove.
She was more moved by the reason for my desire to stay in the old house than she had been by any of the mysteries.
“I would never have thought it of you,” she kept saying. And when she took the beach-plum jelly off the stove and hung it up in a bag to drip overnight, she added: “It’s just as well you are learning how to make this. They like lots of it. I know. I raised seven.”
We let the cat in and went to bed. As I settled down behind the portly back of Mrs. Dove, I reassured myself with the thought that in the morning Jasper would surely be here and that, no matter what might happen, this would be my last night in the House of the Five Pines.
One never knows.
CHAPTER XVI
THE FIFTH NIGHT
MY sense of security was so natural that housekeeping was my last thought. I fell to thinking of how I would have made over the room if I had decided to stay in the house. The dark walls would have to be painted lighter and the stuffy feather-bed changed for new box-springs. I turned over and over, trying to find a place that was neither on the hard edge of the frame of the bed nor directly under my comfortable companion.
It was not easy to be neurasthenic when in the society of Mrs. Dove, even if she was asleep. To look at her and hear her quiet breathing was like watching a peaceful baby. All the repose of the country was embodied in her relaxed form, from the tired hand resting on the patchwork quilt, to the head indulging in its one vanity of hair-curlers. I was wishing that Mrs. Dove had stayed at the house on the four preceding nights when, unconsciously, I drifted off into dreams. Nothing untoward could happen, I thought, when Mrs. Dove was near. What I had needed was another woman to keep the vigil with me.