He threw himself down on the rug before the fire, and in less than five minutes was asleep.
The three women sat on. Occasionally Prudence's mother inhaled the odor from her vinaigrette and made some insignificant remark. She was evidently trying to keep awake. At last, when the clock struck eleven, she rose and said that she must try to be fresh for the next day, and that Prue was very thoughtless to stay out so long.
Thus Carolyn and her mother and the sleeping boy were left in the room. The girl went herself and brought more wood, which she placed carefully on the coals, as carefully as if her own fate depended upon the sticks igniting. Presently the flames curled up about the fuel, licking the bark, with a purple light at the edges.
Mrs. Ffolliott leaned back and dozed a little; Carolyn gazed steadily at the fire. After awhile the clock struck twelve.
The wind had subsided now, save for an occasional long-drawn moan about the house.
Mrs. Ffolliott sat up straight. She tried to look as if she had not been asleep.
"Really," she exclaimed, "I must say that they are very thoughtless, very thoughtless, indeed. I wonder at them."
Carolyn made no reply. She did not change her position in the least. She sat with her arm across her mother's lap, her face towards the hearth.
"Yes," Mrs. Ffolliott repeated; "I do wonder at them. Are you going to sit up any longer, Caro?"
"Just a little while longer," was the answer, in a quiet voice; "but you go, mother; you'll need the rest."