yes opened wide, and in the faint light of the floating candle
flames, just above me, I saw Mr. Dingley's face. "You weren't there!
Why weren't you there?" I said, sitting up.

"You see," a woman's voice that I thought was the Mother Superior's,
put in, "she says and does such strange things that I dared not let her
go out into the street alone."

Then, with an unutterable sense of relief, I recognized father's voice.
"Yes, that was quite right. She was better here." And he sat down on
the edge of the bed.

"Oh, take me home!" I cried.

He smiled, and said, with that same exasperating sort of reassurance
which the Mother Superior had used, "Yes, we are going immediately."

They all made me feel as if they thought that I didn't know what I was
talking about.

"Either every one is crazy," I thought, "or the whole world is in some
plot against me, and they have deceived father, too." Of course my
mind knew that to be ridiculous, but everything conspired to make
familiar people strange. What was it Mr. Dingley had been telling
father just before I returned to consciousness? "Perhaps after I am
alone with father at home I can get him to listen to what I want to
say," I thought.

But there were many reasons why this undertaking was much more
difficult than I had supposed.

In the first place, it was Mr. Dingley who began by asking me where I
had gone. He had been waiting in the front hall for me all the while,
he said, and how had I got out without his seeing me? He had hunted
all through the rooms on the lower floor, and not finding me, had gone
back to our house, supposing I had returned; and from there had set out
in search of me.

It sounded very reasonable, and I was at a loss to understand why it
didn't seem probable to me. Then, when we reached home, we found a
person waiting--a detective Mr. Dingley had sent for--and to him and to
Mr. Dingley as well as to father, I had to tell my story. It came out
in bits and snatches, with questions and answers, Mr. Dingley's all
mixed in with mine; and when they did let me speak uninterruptedly I
was so excited that the words came tumbling out, all confused. It
seemed to me, too, that father was much more anxious over the fact that
I was feverish and had a lump on my forehead, than the fact that the
Spanish Woman had offered me that glass of wine, and then said I should
never leave the house. But he said the thing should be investigated;
and Mr. Dingley sai