"Why, Miss Polly! what if Katie should wake up?"
"She won't be likely to; but I can't help it if she does. I may have the nightmare in the night."
"What is the nightmare?"
"It is something perfectly dreadful, child! I sincerely hope you'll never know by sad experience. It's the most like dying of any feeling I ever had in my life. I can't move a finger, but if I don't move it's sure death; and somebody has to shake me to bring me out of it."
Dotty turned pale.
"Miss Polly, O, please, I'd rather sleep with Katie!"
"But how would you feel to have me die in the night?"
"O, dear, dear, dear," cried Dotty; "let me go for the doctor this minute!"
"Why, child, I haven't got it now, and perhaps I shan't have it at all; but if I do, I shall groan, and that's the way you will know."
Dotty ran into the shed, threw her apron, still sticky with starch, over her head, and screamed at the wood-pile.