“I’ve promised; so I’ll have to, now.”  Cora laughed.  “It’ll do Mary Kane good.  Oh, I’m not going to bother much with him—­he makes me tired.  I never saw anything so complacent as that girl when she came in to-night, as if her little Georgie was the greatest capture the world had ever seen. . . .”

She chattered on.  Laura, passive, listened with a thoughtful expression, somewhat preoccupied.  The talker yawned at last.

“It must be after three,” she said, listlessly, having gone over her evening so often that the colours were beginning to fade.  She yawned again.  “Laura,” she remarked absently, “I don’t see how you can sleep in this bed; it sags so.”

“I’ve never noticed it,” said her sister.  “It’s a very comfortable old bed.”

Cora went to her to be unfastened, reverting to the lieutenant during the operation, and kissing the tire-woman warmly at its conclusion.  “You’re always so sweet to me, Laura,” she said affectionately.  “I don’t know how you manage it.  You’re so good”—­she laughed—­“sometimes I wonder how you stand me.  If I were you, I’m positive I couldn’t stand me at all!” Another kiss and a hearty embrace, and she picked up her wrap and skurried silently through the hall to her own room.

It was very late, but Laura wrote for almost an hour in her book (which was undisturbed) before she felt drowsy.  Then she extinguished the lamp, put the book away and got into bed.

It was almost as if she had attempted to lie upon the empty air:  the mattress sagged under her weight as if it had been a hammock; and something tore with a ripping sound.  There was a crash, and a choked yell from a muffled voice somewhere, as the bed gave way.  For an instant, Laura fought wildly in an entanglement of what she insufficiently perceived to be springs, slats and bedclothes with something alive squirming underneath.  She cleared herself and sprang free, screaming, but even in her fright she remembered her father and clapped her hand over her mouth that she might keep from screaming again.  She dove at the door, opened it, and fled through the hall to Cora’s room, still holding her hand over her mouth.

“Cora!  Oh, Cora!” she panted, and flung herself upon her sister’s bed.

Cora was up instantly; and had lit the gas in a trice.  “There’s a burglar!” Laura contrived to gasp.  “In my room!  Under the bed!”

“What!”

“I fell on him!  Something’s the matter with the bed.  It broke.  I fell on him!”

Cora stared at her wide-eyed.  “Why, it can’t be.  Think how long I was in there.  Your bed broke, and you just thought there was some one there.  You imagined it.”

“No, no, no!” wailed Laura.  “I heard him:  he gave a kind of dreadful grunt.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure?  He wriggled—­oh!  I could feel him!”

Cora seized a box of matches again.  “I’m going to find out.”  “Oh, no, no!” protested Laura, cowering.