Winnie Childs | Page 2

had said: "I beg your
pardon." He was so confused, however, that he was not at all sure he
had not blurted out "Good Lord!"
For a moment he stood as still as the sea would let him in front of the
door, burning to open it again and see if the girls were really there. But,
of course, he could not do that. He would have been almost inclined to
believe they were wax figures if they had not moved, but they had
moved.
They had been--sprawling is not a word to use in connection with
dryads--yet certainly reclining, in easy chairs and on sofas, and had
started up as the door opened to stare at him. One had laughed. Peter
had shut the door on her laugh. He had brought away a vague
impression that chairs, sofas, and carpet were pale gray, and that the
dryads' dresses of wonderful tints, sparkling with gold and silver and

jewels, had been brilliant as tropical flowers against the neutral
background. Also, when he came to think of it, he wasn't sure that the
walls were not mostly made of mirrors. That was why he could not be
certain whether he had seen five dryads or five times five.
"The dryad door," he apostrophized it romantically, keeping his balance
by standing with his feet apart, as old men stand before a fire. It was a
very ordinary-looking door, and that made the romance for Peter in
giving it such a name--just a white-painted door, so new that it smelled
slightly of varnish--yet behind it lay dreamland.
Of course Peter Rolls knew that the tall, incredibly lovely beings were
not dryads and not dreams, although they wore low necks, and pearls
and diamonds in their wonderful, waved hair, at eleven o'clock of a
stormy morning on board an Atlantic liner. Still, he was blessed if he
could think what they were, and what they were doing in that room of
mirrors without any furniture which he could recall, except a very large
screen, a few chairs, and a sofa or two.
The next best thing to the forbidden one--opening the door again to ask
the beings point-blank whether they were pipe dreams or just
mermaids--was to go on to the gymnasium and inquire there. Toward
this end young Mr. Rolls (as he was respectfully called in a business
house never mentioned by his sister) immediately took steps. But
taking steps was as far as he got. Suddenly it seemed a deed you could
not do, to demand of an imitation-camel's attendant why five young
ladies wore evening dress in the morning in a room three doors away.
After all, why should a camel attendant dare to know anything about
them? Perhaps they were merely amusing themselves and each other by
trying on all their gladdest clothes. There might be girls who would
think this a good way to kill time in a storm. Yes, conceivably there
might be such girls, just as there might be sea serpents; but, though
Peter Rolls was too shy to have learned much about the female of his
species, the explanation did not appeal to his reason.
His mind would persist in making a mystery of the mirror-walled room
with its five dazzling occupants, and even the bumpings of the

imitation camel could not jerk out of his head speculations which
played around the dryad door. He was as curious as Fatima herself, and
with somewhat the same curiosity; for, except that in one case the
beautiful ladies had their heads, and in the other had lost them, there
was a hint of resemblance between the two mysteries.
Peter Rolls wondered whether he would like to ask his sister Ena if she
knew the visions, or even if, being a woman, she could form any theory
to account for them. It would be interesting to see what she would say;
but then, unless she were too seasick, she would probably laugh, and
perhaps tell Lord Raygan.
As for the visions themselves, only one had spirit enough left in her to
be able to laugh at being thought a dryad or a mystery. She alone of the
five would have known what "dryad" means. And she could always
laugh, no matter how miserable or how sick she was.
That day she was very sick indeed. They were all very sick, but she
could not help seeing, at her worst, that it was funny.
"For heaven's sake, what are you giggling at?" snapped the longest,
slimmest, most abnormal dryad, diaphanously draped in yellow, when
she could gasp out an intelligible sentence after an exhausting bout of
agony.
"Us," said the girl who could always laugh, a vision in silver.
"Us? I don't see anything funny about us!" groaned a tall dream in