The last thing
he remembered was going down an incline in a tree-bordered avenue. There
was nothing more. He had been all right then. Was this a four-post bed
or was it not? Yes, it was. And was it part of the furnishings of a
swell bedroom--the kind of bedroom he had never been in before? Tip top,
in fact? He stared and tried to recall things--but could not, and in his
bewilderment exclaimed aloud.
"Well," he said, "if this ain't the limit! You may search ME!"
A respectable person in a white apron came to him from the other side of
the room. It was Buttle's wife, who had been hastily called in.
"Sh--sh," she said soothingly. "Don't you worry. Nobody ain't goin' to
search you. Nobody ain't. There! Sh, sh, sh," rather as if he were a
baby. Beginning to be conscious of a curious sense of weakness, Selden
lay and stared at her in a helplessness which might have been considered
pathetic. Perhaps he had got "bats in his belfry," and there was no use
in talking.
At that moment, however, the door opened and a young lady entered.
She was "a looker," G. Selden's weakness did not interfere with his
perceiving. "A looker, by gee!" She was dressed, as if for going out,
in softly tinted, exquisite things, and a large, strange hydrangea blue
flower under the brim of her hat rested on soft and full black hair.
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