As soon as I woke I got up and went to look at my new possession. To my surprise the room seemed empty. I looked round. No Suzee. I went up to the bed. It had apparently not been slept in, but two of the blankets had been pulled off and disappeared.
As I stood by the bedside, wondering what had become of her, I felt a soft kiss on my ankles and, looking down, there she was, creeping out from under the bed with one of the blankets round her. Her hair was a lovely undisarranged mass; but the rosebuds in it were dead, and it was dusty. Her face looked like white silk in its youthful pallor. She smiled up delightedly at me and crawled out farther from the bed valance.
"What are you doing down there?" I asked. "Wasn't the bed comfortable?"
"Oh yes, Treevor, underneath I was very comfortable and warm. You see, I have always been accustomed to something over my head, and in this room the ceiling is such a long way off."
She got up and stood before me, her rounded shoulders and sweetly moulded arms shewing above the blanket.
"You don't mind, do you?" she added, with a note of quick anxiety.
I laughed as I remembered the low ceilings, almost on one's head, that are the rule in Chinatown, and caught her up in my arms.
"No, I don't mind," I said; "only get into bed now, and don't shew that you have slept underneath instead of inside. I am going to order breakfast and I will call you in a minute or two."
I threw her on to the bed, into which she rolled like a kitten, kissed her, and went back to my own room.
When we had had breakfast I took Suzee with me on the car, and all the eyes of its occupants fixed upon us for the whole of the journey. This was harmless, however, and I did not mind, while Suzee sat apparently sublimely unconscious of the rude stares and ruder smiles, with the calm gravity of the Oriental who is above insults because he considers himself above criticism.