"I've overslept the alarm!" was Phyllis's first thought next morning when she woke. "It must be—" Where was she? So tired, so very tired, she remembered being, and telling some one an interminable story.... She held her sleepy eyes wide open by will-power, and found that a silent but evidently going clock hung in sight. Six-thirty. Then she hadn't overslept the alarm. But ... she hadn't set any alarm. And she had been sleeping propped up in a sitting position, half on—why, it was a shoulder. And she was rolled tight in a terra-cotta down quilt. She sat up with a jerk—fortunately a noiseless one—and turned to look. Then suddenly she remembered all about it, that jumbled, excited, hard-working yesterday which had held change and death and marriage for her, and which she had ended by perching on "poor Allan Harrington's" bed and sending him to sleep by holding his hands and telling him children's stories. She must have fallen asleep after he did, and slid down on his shoulder. A wonder it hadn't disturbed him! She stole another look at him, as he lay sleeping still, heavily and quietly. After all, she was married to him, and she had a perfect right to recite him to sleep if she wanted to. She unrolled herself cautiously, and slid out like a shadow.
She almost fell over poor Wallis, sleeping too in his clothes outside the door, on Allan's day couch. He came quickly to his feet, as if he were used to sudden waking.
"Don't disturb Mr. Harrington," said Phyllis as staidly as if she had been giving men-servants orders in her slipper-feet all her life. "He seems to be sleeping quietly."
"Begging your pardon, Mrs. Harrington, but you haven't been giving him anything, have you?" asked Wallis. "He hasn't slept without a break for two hours to my knowledge since I've been here, not without medicine."
"Not a thing," said Phyllis, smiling with satisfaction. "He must have been sleeping nearly three hours now! I read him to sleep, or what amounted to it. I got his nerves quiet, I think. Please kill anybody that tries to wake him, Wallis."
"Very good, ma'am," said Wallis gravely. "And yourself, ma'am?"
"I'm going to get some sleep, too," she said. "Call me if there's anything—useful."
She meant "necessary," but she wanted so much more sleep she never knew the difference. When she got into her room she found that there also she was not alone: the wistful wolfhound was curled plaintively across her bed, which he overlapped. From his nose he seemed to have been dipping largely into the cup of chocolate somebody had brought to her, and which she had forgotten to drink when she found it, on her first retiring.
"You aren't a bit high-minded," said Phyllis indignantly. She was too sleepy to do more than shove him over to the back of the bed. "All—the beds here are so—full," she complained sleepily; and crawled inside, and never woke again till nearly afternoon.
There was all the grave business to be done, in the days that followed, of taking Mrs. Harrington to a quiet place beside her husband, and drawing together again the strings of the disorganized household. Phyllis found herself whispering over and over again: