I started to plead for Verley, but the doctor had disappeared into his office. A lump rose in my throat as I thought of my little dog, and again I wished that I had not come to this place. The doctor seemed a different man to the one I had known in the West Indies, and although I had resented his flattery of me there, the curt, authoritative tone he had used to me here hurt me as much.
Curiously enough, though I had not thought about the matter previously, nor had he told me, I was not surprised to find that he was married.
My room was on the top floor. It was a very large and pretty chamber, quite the best room I had ever had, for even the hotel room, which had seemed to me splendid, was bare and plain in comparison.
'Mandy was a round-faced, smiling, strong-looking girl of about eighteen. Her hair was screwed up into funny little braids that stuck up for all the world like rat-tails on her head. She had shiny black eyes, and big white teeth. She called me "chile," and said:
"I hopes you sleep well, honey chile."
She said her room was just across the hall, and if I wanted anything in the night, I was to call her.
My own room was very large, and it was mostly in shadow. Now, all my life I've had the most unreasonable and childish fear of "being in the dark alone." I seldom went to bed without looking under it, behind bureaus, doors, etc., and I experienced a slight sense of fear as 'Mandy was about to depart.
"Isn't there any one on this floor but us?" I asked.
"No; no one else sleeps up here, chile," said 'Mandy; "but Dr. Manning he hab he labriterry there, and some time he work all night."
The laboratory was apparently adjoining my room, and there was a door leading into it. I went over and tried it after 'Mandy went. It was locked.