Gloria managed a feeble laugh. “I know what gave me the sudden fright,” she said, now more quietly settled and almost free from the signs of alarm. “I was just dreaming horribly that Jack called and I couldn’t go to her. Night-marish, you know, then I actually did hear voices in the hall and it made the thing so real.”
“And what really caused it was the repressed fear you did experience when you saw Jack in the bottom of the canoe. While you were awake you threw it off, but it bobbed up serenely in sleep. Well, you’re all right now, Jack is all right so far as danger goes, but what threatens you as something really not all right is the busy day on the essay. Keep your eyes shut. There,” she held her finger tips over Gloria’s fluttering lids, “and if you can’t really sleep you can rest. I’ll go and do likewise.”
But even the eyelids rebelled after a time, and quickly as she felt at liberty to do so, Gloria jumped up, made for the showers, then spent fifteen minutes in vigorous exercise.
“More like it,” she exclaimed, when dressing for the free day, in such apparel as might be worn indoors or out.
During breakfast and after, the whole place was a-buzz with queries and opinions concerning Jack. Some insisted the Steppy had come again and carried her off, “sick and all,” others heard the voices and knew Jack must be “almost dying and maybe had to make her will.” Pat said she was rich enough to have something to will, and while she, Pat, was very hard up at the moment, she hoped magnanimously that Jack would live long enough to spend her own money. The little joke went by unappreciated.
Mary Mears did not appear in the dining room. Her absence was commented upon, but Edna Hobbs passed the word that Mary would not leave Jack’s bedside, and that Miss Alton had given permission for her to remain.
All of which might or might not have been authentic, but served, at any rate, to keep interest keen and liven things up generally.
Again Gloria was surrounded by admiring ones, especially the younger girls looked upon her as a real dramatic heroine, and even the box of candy, for which she now thanked them personally, had not, they declared, fully expressed the admiration rampant.
Finally, classes were due, students scattered, and those free for the essay finish dove into secluded corners, hugging hopes and strangling misgivings.
Gloria had only a few pages to correct, then she would pass it in to Miss Sanders and it would be ready for typing. She gathered her papers and her reference books, concentrating upon the importance of elusive phrases, and had just begun to write when Maggie, the maid, poked her head in the door and set forth a summons to the office.