The name turned out to be Parafin. Mrs. Parafin called early in the afternoon, on her way to some entertainment at the Pump Room: a chatty, pleasant woman, younger than her husband. He had retired from practice, and they lived in a white villa outside the town.
And what with looking at the shops, and parading up and down the public walks, and the entertainment at the Pump Room, to which we went with Mrs. Parafin, and all the rest of it, we felt uncommonly sleepy when night came, and were beginning to regard Pumpwater as a sort of Eden.
“Johnny, have you slept?”
I was brushing my hair at the glass, under the morning sun, when John Whitney, half-dressed, and pale and languid, opened my door and thus accosted me.
“Yes; like a top. Why? Is anything the matter, John?”
“See here,” said he, sinking into the easy-chair by the fireplace, “it is an odd thing, but I have again not slept. I can’t sleep.”
I put my back against the dressing-table and stood looking down at him, brush in hand. Not slept again! It was an odd thing.
“But what can be the reason, John?”
“I am beginning to think it must be the room.”
“How can it be the room?”