smothery feeling. When
she finally dozed off it was to fall into a succession of uneasy dreams.
She thought that the cat was sitting on her face; that an old ogre had
her head tied up in a bag and was carrying it home to change into an
apple dumpling, then that she was a fly and had fallen into a bottle of
mucilage. From the last dream she roused with a start, hot and
uncomfortable, but hardly wide awake enough to know what was the matter.

The salty dried beef they had had for supper made her intensely thirsty,
and remembering the pitcher of fresh water which Joyce always brought
into the tent every night, she slipped out of bed and stumbled across
the floor toward the table. The moon was several nights past the full
now, so that at this late hour the walls of the tent glimmered white in
its light, and where the flap was turned back at the end, it shone in,
in a broad white path.

Not more than half awake, Mary had forgotten the elaborate way in which
she had tied up her face, and catching sight in the mirror of an awful
spook gliding toward her, she stepped back, almost frozen with terror.
Never had she imagined such a hideous ghost, white as flour, with one
round eye higher than the other, and a dreadful slit of a mouth, all
askew.

She was too frightened to utter a sound, but the pitcher fell to the
floor with a crash, and as the cold water splashed over her feet she
bounded back into bed and pulled the cover over her head. Instantly, as
her hand came in contact with the mask on her face, she realized that it
was only her own reflection in the glass which had frightened her, but
the shock was so great she could not stop trembling.

Wakened by the sound of the breaking pitcher and Mary's wild plunge back
into bed, Joyce sat up in alarm, but in response to her whisper Mary
explained in muffled tones from under the bedclothes that she had simply
gotten up for a drink of water and dropped the pitcher. All the rest of
the night her sleep was fitful and uneasy, for toward morning her face
began to burn as if it were on fire. She tore off the mask and used it
to wipe away what remained of the ointment. Most of it had been
absorbed, however, and the skin was broken out in little red blisters.

Maybe in her zeal she had used too much of the magical cosmetic, or
maybe her face, already made tender by various applications, resented
the vigorous rubbings she gave it. At any rate she had cause to be
frightened when she saw