Over her own costume she was wearing a warm crimson wrapper of Miss Frean’s.
Heaping the fire with the last remaining logs, she lay down again, drawing the covers over her head to shut out the cold white light of dawn. This time promptly Tory fell asleep. The sleep was not particularly heavy. Certainly she was listening for a sound outside that might announce the return of Memory Frean to her own home. Had she been forced to stay at another house because of the storm or illness, Tory believed she would come home as soon as possible.
Naturally in her semiconscious condition Tory’s dreams were confused. Her head was filled with chivalrous romances of the past, with stories of knights and ladies and tournaments. Never far away was the thought of her own Girl Scout organization. Prosaic though it might appear to some persons, for Tory it held endless ideals and romances. At present in her dreams, amid the combination of impressions the figure of King Arthur appeared, and “Camelot, a city of shadowy palaces.”
King Arthur seemed to have met Memory Frean somewhere, and was escorting Miss Frean to the little House in the Woods, accompanied by a troop of Knights of the Round Table.
One of them was making an extraordinary amount of noise. The knight must have ridden his horse up to the front door. He was pounding upon it as if he were demanding admittance.
Half dazed, Tory at last sat up on the edge of the couch.
At dawn she had raised one of the blinds. Now the sun outside was making a white magic on the snow as beautiful as any picture in her imagination.
There was no magic, however, with regard to the noise; it was unmistakably real.
Tory half stumbled, half ran across the cold floor in her stockinged feet, with the dressing gown close about her.
She turned the key and her hand was on the knob when she paused an instant.