John watched her with strange, new interest. It was a sudden reversal of a habitual situation. She had waited on him. He was now doing the same for her, and the performance seemed to hold in abeyance a full realization of the tragedy in his life. It may have been autosuggestion, induced by the child's great need of him, but whatever it was was vaguely soothing. He found himself with his young back to a wall of miserable fact, valiantly fighting off constantly increeping and maddening memories which threatened to unman him.
Later that afternoon they reached Bristol, and, as Dora looked weary, John decided to go to a hotel for the night. There was one near the station, and to it they went and secured adjoining rooms. While he was making the arrangements in the office Dora waited for him in the great, barren-looking parlor, the scant furniture of which was upholstered in dark-green plush, and when he came for her she was standing at a window, looking out. The sight of her worried him, for she seemed homesick and drooped like a storm-tossed bird.
"Now for our supper," he said, cheerfully. But she shook her head. She was not a bit hungry, she declared. The motion of the car had sickened her at the stomach.
"Then I'll put you to bed," he said, "and leave you there till I get my supper."
She acquiesced, and he led her to her room up-stairs. "Tumble in," he said, still cheerily, and she began slowly to undress, sitting in a big arm-chair which all but swallowed her diminutive form. She was having trouble with the knots of her shoe-strings, which, in her haste, she had tied too carelessly, and he knelt down and unfastened them. "What a baby you are, after all!" he said, tenderly, a thrill that was almost parental going through him as he drew off the shoes, observed the thick coating of dust that was on them and the holes in the heels and toes of her stockings. "I'll leave your shoes outside the door, and a porter will clean them before morning and put them back," he said, smiling. He opened a valise, took out a clean though tattered nightgown she had brought, and spread it on the bed. Again he thought of Joel Eperson and wondered if Joel had done all such things for Martha Jane when she was a tiny tot. It was likely, for there were several years between their ages, and Joel seemed to be that sort of man.
When Dora was ready to retire he left her. "Are you afraid?" he asked from the door.
She shook her head. "What is there to be afraid of?" she asked, with a wan smile.
He returned in about an hour. He entered his room and peered cautiously in at the connecting door. The light from his gas-jet fell on her bed. She was awake.
"What is this?" he chided her. "Not asleep yet, and you all fagged out! Ah, I see! No wonder. Your window is shut. It is as close in here as a corked flask." He went in and opened her window. He thought the covering over her was too heavy for such a warm night and drew the white coverlet down below her feet. "There, there, that's better," he said. Her tangled hair lay unbecomingly across her brow, and he wanted to brush it back, but, conscious of a queer timidity, he refrained from doing so.
"I can't sleep for thinking," she suddenly said, with a touch of her old bluntness. "You haven't said where we are going."