Miss Tucker refused to be left alone and a nurse was detailed to spend the night with her.

When the nurses on their rounds reached Miss Landbury’s room in the McCormick Building, they had another fright.  The room was empty.  The bed was cold,—­had not been occupied for hours, likely.  They rushed to the head nurse, and a wild search was instituted.

The Dukes’ room, Number Six, McCormick, was wrapped in darkness.

“Don’t go near them,” Miss Alien said.  “Perhaps they did not hear the noise, and Mr. Duke should not be disturbed.”

So the wild search went on.

But after a time, a Mexican porter, with a lantern, seeking every nook and corner, plodded stealthily around a corner of the McCormick.

He heard a gasp beside him, and turning his lantern he looked directly into the window, where four white, tense faces peered at him with staring eyes.  He returned their stare, speechlessly.  Then he saw Miss Landbury.

“Ain’t you lost?” he ejaculated.

Miss Landbury, frightened out of her senses, and not recognizing the porter in the darkness, shot into her bed on the floor, and David answered the man’s questions.  A moment later an outraged matron, flanked by two nurses, marched in upon them.

“What is the meaning of this?” they demanded.

“Search me,” said David pleasantly.  “Our friends and neighbors got lonesome in the night and refused to sleep alone and let us rest in contentment.  So they moved in, and here we are.”

Both Gooding and Miss Landbury positively declined to go home alone, and other nurses were appointed to guard them during the brief remaining hours of the night.  At four o’clock came sleep and silence and serenity, with Carol on the floor, clutching David’s hand, which even in sleep she did not resign.

The next morning a huge notice was posted on the bulletin board.

“Any one who tells a ghost story, or discusses departed spirits, in this institution or on the grounds thereof, shall have all privileges suspended for a period of six weeks.

“By order of the Superintendent.”

CHAPTER XVII

RUBBING ELBOWS

“Chicago, Illinois.

“Dearly Beloveds: 

“Nearly I am converted to matrimony as a life career.  Almost I feel it is worth the sacrifice of independence, the death of originality, the banishment of special friendship, and the monotonous bondage of rigid routine.

“I have just come back from Mount Mark, where I had my second visit with little Julia.  She is worth the giving up of anything, and the enduring of everything.  She is marvelous.

“When I first saw her, just after Aunt Grace brought her home,—­I think I told you that I went without a new pair of lovely gray shoes at ten dollars a pair in order to go to Mount Mark to meet her,—­she was very sweet, and all that, but when they are so rosily new they are more like scientific curiosities than literary inspirations.  But I have met her again, and I am everlastingly converted to the domestic enslavement of women.  One little Julia is worth it.  So as soon as I find the husband, I am going to cultivate my eleven children.  You remember that was the career I picked out in the days of my tender youth.