CHAPTER XXIII[ToC]
DOROTHY'S ESCAPE
When Miss Bell returned to Dorothy's room in the sanitarium, after her talk over the telephone, Dorothy saw that her anxiety had reached a state of prostration. She seemed convinced that she had taken to the institution the wrong girl, and the dread of disgrace, especially as she was a new nurse in the house, seemed to weigh very heavily upon her. She would come up and look into Dorothy's face, examine the pupils of her eyes, and then go away sighing.
"Are you sorry I am not demented?" asked Dorothy, with as much in her voice as she could command. "Just think what a good time you will have, when we get back to camp."
"I will run away," was the only reply the new nurse would make.
Night came, and the nurse lay down to rest. Dorothy pretended to do the same thing, but she had resolved to get out of that sanitarium, without bringing disgrace on this young woman. But the attempt would be fraught with danger. If she were caught, not only would she be returned to the sanitarium, but she knew there was another ward——
Dorothy did not permit herself to think of this. "I am going to get away before daylight," she said. "Then, when the mother of the missing girl comes and I have gotten away, they will not know whether it was her daughter, or me."
But to get away would mean trouble for the nurse also. She would be blamed for leaving Dorothy unguarded!
"The other attendant comes in at five in the morning," decided Dorothy, "then I must—go!"
It was an awful thought! She could hear the guards pacing up and down the corridors, she had seen the high fence with its iron palings, and as to gates—there were guards all about them.