“I was thinking, Edith. I'm sorry. I'll go at once. Why aren't you asleep?”
“I don't sleep much lately.” Their voices were cautious. “I never go to sleep until you're settled down, anyhow.”
“Why not? Am I noisy?”
“It's not that.”
She went away, a drooping, listless figure that climbed the stairs slowly and left him in the doorway, puzzled and uncomfortable.
At six that morning Dan, tip-toeing downstairs to warm his left-over coffee and get his own breakfast, heard a voice from Willy Cameron's room, and opened the door. Willy Cameron was sitting up in bed with his eyes closed and his arms extended, and was concluding a speech to a dream audience in deep and oratorical tones.
“By God, it is time the plain people know their power.”
Dan grinned, and, his ideas of humor being rather primitive, he edged his way into the room and filled the orator's sponge with icy water from the pitcher.
“All right, old top,” he said, “but it is also time the plain people got up.”
Then he flung the sponge and departed with extreme expedition.