CHAPTER XIV

GOOD-NIGHT

When the three young people had been sitting for half an hour on the wide piazza of Cobhurst, enjoying the moonlight effects and waiting for the return of Dr. Tolbridge, Miriam, who was reclining in a steamer chair, ceased making remarks, but very soon after she became silent she was heard again, not speaking, however, but breathing audibly and with great regularity.  Ralph and Dora turned toward her and smiled.

“Poor little thing,” said the latter in a low voice; “she must be tired out.”

“Yes,” said Ralph, also speaking in an undertone, “she was up very early this morning, and has been at some sort of work ever since.  I do not intend that this shall happen again.  You must excuse her, Miss Bannister,—­she is a girl yet, you know.”

“And a sweet one, too,” said Dora, “with a perfect right to go to sleep if she chooses.  I should be ashamed of myself if I felt in the least degree offended.  Do not let us disturb her until the doctor comes; the nap will do her good.”

“Suppose, then,” said Ralph, “that we take a little turn in the moonlight.  Then we need not trouble ourselves to lower our voices.”

“That will be very well,” said Dora, “but I am afraid she may take cold, although the night air is so soft.  I think I saw a lap robe on a table in the hall; I will spread that over her.”

Ralph whispered that he would get the robe, but motioning him back, and having tiptoed into the hall and back again, Dora laid the light covering over the sleeping girl so gently that the regular breathing was not in the least interrupted.  Then they both went quietly down the steps, and out upon the lawn.

“She is such a dear girl,” said Dora, as they slowly moved away, “and although we only met to-day, I am really growing very fond of her, and I like her the better because there is still so much of the child left in her.  Do not you like her the better for that, Mr. Haverley?”

Ralph did agree most heartily, and it made him happy to agree on any subject with a girl who was even more beautiful by moonlight than by day; who was so kind, and tended to his sister, and whose generous disposition could overlook little breaches of etiquette when there was reason to do so.

As they walked backward and forward, not very far away from the piazza, and sometimes stopping to admire bits of the silver-tinted landscape, Dora, with most interesting deftness, gave Ralph further opportunity of knowing her.  With his sister as a suggesting subject, she talked about herself; she told him how she, too, had lost her parents early in life, and had been obliged to be a very independent girl, for her stepmother, although just as good as she could be, was not a person on whom she could rely very much.  As for her brother, the dearest man on earth, she had always felt that she was more capable of taking care of him, at least in all matters in home life, than he of her.