Sally Bishop : $b A romanceThurston, E. Temple (Ernest Temple)
General
Sally Bishop : $b A romance
Thurston, E. Temple (Ernest Temple)
Man-woman relationships -- Fiction
When she rose to her feet, she stood listening--listening intently.
Then she moved to her bedroom door and opened it. She could hear him
still moving in his room below; but now it was in the room beneath
hers--beneath her bedroom. He was going to bed. She crept to the top
of the stairs. Every sound she could hear there, the dropping of his
boots on the floor, the opening and shutting of his cupboard doors
as he put his clothes away. Then, last of all, the creaking of the
springs of his bed as he got into it and moved to right and left,
seeking the comfortable groove.
A heavy sigh forced its way through her lips. She had to swallow
hastily in her throat to check the sudden rising of the tears. At
last, with impulsive decision, she went back to her room, took a silk
dressing-gown from the wardrobe, fitted her feet into little silk
slippers and, without hesitation, without pausing to formulate her
definite plan of action, she crept down the stairs again, opened the
door of his sitting-room and stole in.
"Jack," she whispered. "Jack!"
Her throat was dry and the low voice found no resonance from the roof
of her mouth. There was no answer. He had not heard her.
"Jack!" She said it again and tapped faintly on his door.
"That you, Sally?"
"Yes."
"What is it? Come in. I'm in bed. Believe I was asleep. What is it?
Come in."
She opened the door gently. He sat up in bed, found matches, struck
one and lit a candle.
"Lord!" he exclaimed, "you'll catch your death of cold. What do you
want, child?"
"I can't get to sleep," she murmured, blinking her eyes at the sudden
glare of the candle.
"Why not?"
He sat there, looking at her, his eyes dazed, half awake.
"I don't know."
"Thinking too much?"
"Yes, I suppose so."
"Well, count sheep going through a gate. A hundred's the prescribed
amount."
She tried to smile because she knew that if she did not, he would
think she was unhappy or depressed.
"No, I want you to let me have a book," she said; "I think perhaps
if I read--"
"Of course, take anything you like, and try smoking a cigarette. That
may make you drowsy."
He lay back on the pillows. For a moment, she stood, undecided as
to what to do; then she went into the other room, taking up the first
book that her hands touched in the darkness. There, again, she waited
in silence. At last she undid the fastenings that held her
dressing-gown tight about her and came back again into the room.
"What did you get?" he asked.
She looked for the first time at the cover.
"Macaulay's 'History of England.'"
The springs of the bed creaked to his chuckle of laughter.
"You'll go to sleep all right now," he said.
"But I think I'd like a cigarette, if I might."
"Yes, why not?"
"Where shall I find them?"
"In the case, in my waistcoat pocket. It's hanging over the back of
the chair. What a ridiculous child you are to let that dressing-gown
flap open like that. You'll catch your death of cold. Fasten it up--go
on!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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