In the Bishops Carriage | Page 9

idea, and left the room, only to come back again to whisper to me:
"What name, my dear?"
"What name? what name?" I repeated blankly. What name, indeed. I wonder how "Nance Olden" would have done.
"Don't hurry, dear, don't perplex yourself," she whispered anxiously, noting my bewilderment. "There's plenty of time, and it makes no difference--not a particle, really."
I put my hand to my head.
"I can't think--I can't think. There's one girl has nervous prostration, and her name's got mixed with mine, and I can't--"
"Hush, hush! Never mind. You shall come and lie down in my room. You'll stay with us to-night, anyway, and we'll have a doctor in, Bishop."
"That's right," assented the Bishop. "I'll go get him myself."
"You--you're not going!" I cried in dismay. It was real. I hated to see him go.
"Nonsense--'phone." It was Edward who went himself to telephone for the doctor, and I saw my time getting short.
But the Bishop had to go, anyway. He looked out at his horses shivering in front of the house, and the sight hurried him.
"My child," he said, taking my hand, "just let Mrs. Ramsay take care of you to-night. Don't bother about anything, but just rest. I'll see you in the morning," he went on, noticing that I kind of clung to him. Well, I did. "Can't you remember what I said to you in the carriage--that I wished you were my daughter. I wish you were, indeed I do, and that I could take you home with me and keep you, child."
"Then--to-night--if--when you pray--will you pray for me as if I was--your own daughter?"
Tom Dorgan, you think no prayers but a priest's are any good, you bigoted, snickering Catholic! I tell you if some day I cut loose from you and start in over again, it'll be the Bishop's prayers that'll do it.
The Dowager and I passed Edward in the ball. He gave me a look behind her back, and I gave him one to match it. Just practice, you know, Tom. A girl can never know when she'll want to be expert in these things.
She made me lie down on a couch while she turned the lamp low, and then left me alone in a big palace of a bedroom filled with things. And I wanted everything I saw. If I could, I'd have lifted everything in sight.
But every minute brought that doctor nearer. Soon as I could be really sure she was gone, I got up, and, hurrying to the long French windows that opened on the great stone piazza, I unfastened them quietly, and inch by inch I pushed them open.
There within ten feet of me stood Edward. No escape that way. He saw me, and was tiptoeing heavily toward me, when I heard the door click behind me, and in walked the Dowager back again.
I flew to her.
"I thought I heard some one out there," I said.
"It frightened me so that I got up to look. Nobody could be out there, could they?"
She walked to the window and put her head out. Her lips tightened grimly.
"No, nobody could be out there," she said, breathing hard, "but you might get nervous just thinking there might be. We'll go to a room upstairs."
And go we did, in spite of all I could plead about feeling well enough now to go alone and all the rest of it. How was I to get out of a second or third-story window?
I began to think about the Correction again as I followed her upstairs, and after she'd left me I just sat waiting for the doctor to come and send me there. I didn't much care, till I remembered the Bishop. I could almost see his face as it would look when he'd be called to testify against me, and I'd be standing in that railed-in prisoner's pen, in the middle of the court-room, where Dan Christensen stood when they tried him.
No, I couldn't bear that; not without a fight, anyway. It was for the Bishop I'd got into this part of the scrape. I'd get out of it so's he shouldn't know how bad a thing a girl can be.
While I lay thinking it over, the same maid that had brought me the tea came in. She was an ugly, thin little thing. If she's a sample of the maids in that house, the lot of them would take the kink out of your pretty hair, Thomas J. Dorgan, Esquire, late of the House of Refuge and soon of Moyamensing. Don't throw things. People in my set, mine and the Dowager's, don't.
She had been sent to help me undress, she said, and make me comfortable. The doctor lived just around the corner and would be in in a minute.
Phew! She wasn't very promising, but she was my only chance. I