"Excuse me, Miss Jessop, but would you mind assuring me that there's nobody crouching under the bed?" he used to say. "Of course I know there's not, but there appears to be, and I'd be obliged if you'd look!"
If I went under that bed once, I went fifty times.
"Why, to tell you the truth, Miss Elton, I don't see a thing," I said. "Shall I turn on the light?"
"No—not yet," she said. "The doctor said to hold out as long as I could. Would you mind putting your hand there?"
"Not a bit," said I, and I pawed all over the foot of her bed. Finally I got up and sat there.
"What happens now?" I asked her.
"She just moves up and sits farther out," said she.
I couldn't think of much to say to that, she was so quiet and hopeless, so I waited awhile and finally I said,
"Would it help you any to talk about it?"
"Oh, if you didn't mind!" she cried out, and then the poor thing began. It makes me tired, the way people treat a patient like that. There was that girl just bottled up, you might as well say, because they all thought it would make her worse to talk about it. Her father pooh-poohed it, and her mother cried and asked her to send for their rector, and even Dr. Stanchon slipped up there, it seemed to me, for he advised her not to dwell on it. Not dwell on it! Why, how could she help it, I'd like to know?