"She's here, and safe and well, and don't know me no more than the dead. But I can't get her out. Two old women and one old man are on the watch all day long. I daren't sneeze but they know it. And before they go off the watch there's two big, savage dogs goes on, and prowl about all night. I don't know what to do; tell me. She's awful down-hearted, and cries and goes on. I heard your whistle last night. Her room is next to mine—the windows to the left. If you walk on the beach she'll see you; she sits at the window all day. Doctor O. is going to Cuba in a week, and going to take her with him; so you had better be quick."
Mrs. Sharpe read her own composition over two or three times, with a satisfied look.
"I think that will do," she murmured. "Trust him to find a way out of a fix, and we're in a fix now, if there ever was one. Drat the dogs! If it wasn't for them I could get on myself."
Mrs. Sharpe was not a rapid scribe. It had taken her a considerable while to write this, and the household was astir. She folded it up in the smallest possible dimensions, and wedged it into her thimble.
"A brass thimble makes a good, strong envelope," said the nurse, with a grim smile. "And now to begin my day's work."
She quitted her own apartment and went into that of her charge. Mollie was still asleep—sleeping like a babe, with lips apart, and cheeks softly flushed, and loose, golden hair falling in burnished masses over the pillow. Involuntarily Mrs. Sharpe paused.
"She looks like a picture," she thought. "No wonder he's crazy in love."
The sound of the opening door awoke the light sleeper. She rose up on her elbow and stared around. The nurse advanced with a propitiatory smile.
"Good-morning, miss," she said, cheerfully. "I hope you had a nice sleep."
"Oh, is it you?" said Mollie. "I was dreaming I was back home with guardy, and Sir Roger, and poor Hugh, and here I am still. Oh!" in a voice of bitter anguish, "why did you awake me?"